What Are Video Games Turning Us Into?
Page 4 of 6 -- Violence aside, there are other, more subtle influences to consider. Some say that gaming also affects empathy, attention, and creativity, especially in younger children. While researchers work to validate various hypotheses on those topics, teachers in the trenches in elementary schools say they don't need to wait for study results to see the impact of excessive gaming in young kids. "There are always those few that are very obsessed. You see a difference in the way they participate, in their attention," says Cheryl Hirshman, who teaches elementary school in Lincoln and has led graduate programs at Wheelock College on media literacy. "Kids who are heavily involved [in gaming] have no ability to sit still, no patience. School is not fast enough for them."
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And like a lot of other specialists who work with children and teens, she worries about young gamers' physical health. "We do see overweight children and kids who aren't physically fit. They're so used to sitting and looking, they're just slower to react."
One widely reported study appears to back up Hirshman's hunch: The Center for Research on Interactive Technology, Television, and Children at the University of Texas has found that video-game use - but, surprisingly, not television - is "strongly related to children's weight status." Overweight children younger than 8 were much more likely to report spending a moderate amount of time playing video games than lower-weight kids. The relationship between weight and gaming isn't clear, though. It could be that the sedentary act of gaming causes weight gain, but it could be the opposite: that children who are socially ostracized for being heavy might be more likely to turn to games for amusement than their peers. Either way, it's not a healthy picture.
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If gaming's legacy is a benumbed, overweight population of entertainment addicts apt to strike first and talk later, why don't video games have us up in arms? Two words: They're fun. It's fun to bash Pikachu off the edge of Hyrule Temple with an outsized hammer, as you can do in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and it's fun when he bounces back to life, unblemished, to die another day. It's fun to make Corey Dillon spike the football and dance in the end zone after a touchdown, as you can do in Madden NFL 2005. And to a lot of people, it's fun - in the sick-funny-in-your-face manner of a Quentin Tarantino movie or an Eminem rap - to run over prostitutes and stage home invasions in Grand Theft Auto.
Unlike television shows, video games are interactive, a distinction that seems to matter to a lot of people, parents in particular. "Anybody can sit on the couch and stare at a TV set with their mouth slightly open," says Jamie McPherson, the Maine gamer-dad. When playing video games, especially on a personal computer, as McPherson and his son do, "you're using a computer, using a mouse, using a keyboard, and you are troubleshooting," he says. "Granted, using a keyboard and a mouse is a minimal skill, but it's a skill a lot of grown-ups still have trouble with." Continued...
