Although the overall screen time of boys and girls does not differ much in adolescence, their preferences for game genres differ dramatically. Table 12.2 shows teenage boys’ and girls’ top five favorite games. The only game on both lists is Minecraft. Minecraft is an ingenious process-based game whose goal is to create or decorate objects with blocks. There are relatively few traditional game features in Minecraft. For example, it lacks levels (that is, the rewards that make a player want to continue playing). The player must invent many of the details himself or herself, alone or together with friends. Moreover, the social functions of the game are extensive. Numerous YouTube clips contain role-playing scenarios, instructions, etc. The versatility of the game may be the reason why it appeals to teens of both sexes. They can express and exploit their own interests and exercise individual creativity.
Table 12.2. Top five favorite games among ten- to fifteen-year-olds, by gender, 2014
Boys
Girls
1
Minecraft
Candy Crush
2
Call of Duty
The Sims
3
Grand Theft Auto (GTA)
Just Dance
4
Fifa
Subway Surfers
5
League of Legends
Minecraft
Source: Unpublished data from a study by Patti M. Valkenburg, supported by a grant from the European Research Council
In addition, table 12.2 shows that as in the 1980s, teenage boys prefer violent games such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Call of Duty. GTA is a controversial game; it is a parody of American society, but understanding the parody requires knowledge that younger teenagers often lack. In most countries, GTA, which contains a significant amount of violence, is considered inappropriate for children and adolescents. Although a small percentage of girls like to play violent games, most girls opt for casual games such as Candy Crush, dancing games such as Just Dance, or simulation games such as The Sims. Thus, while the gender gap in time spent playing games (and, more generally, in time spent with interactive media) may be shrinking, gender still dramatically influences game preference. It is not so much that girls do not like games, but rather that their genre preferences differ from those of boys.
Effects of Gaming
Academics have long been fascinated by the phenomenon of play. Play seems to be an integral part not only of Homo sapiens (our “wise” species), but also of other mammals, and even of some birds and reptiles. This trans-specific quality of play suggests that it has an important evolutionary function. By imitating adults and playing at hunting or gathering food, young individuals of a species learn how to survive in a hostile world. Play is important for humans’ cognitive, emotional, and social development. Children who play extensively have a better chance of growing into creative adults than those who do not. Playing helps them to explore the boundaries of social behavior, to understand other perspectives, and to learn to control emotions (as when they win or lose).20
The functions of traditional play have been well documented. But as traditional play is increasingly supplanted by digital gaming, the question arises whether digital gaming is as good as traditional forms of play for child development. Opinions on this issue are divided. Proponents of gaming usually cite its positive effects, such as improved hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness, and the potential for playing with others. Opponents maintain that games take too much time from other activities, including traditional play, homework, reading, and sports, implying that digital gaming is inferior to these activities. These critics stress the addictive potential of games. Research on gaming is evolving. Thus far, most of it has dealt with the effect of violent games on aggressive behavior (see chapter 7). Here we focus on the burgeoning literature on other physical, cognitive, and social-emotional effects of digital gaming.
Physical Effects
The popular press is replete with articles focusing on the negative physical effects of video gaming. In the 1990s, we heard about “Nintendo thumb,” a repetitive-stress-injury-like ailment associated with popular controllers of the time. Similarly, as mobile phones and tablets entered the media landscape, neologisms such as “Blackberry thumb,” “WhatsAppitis,” and the “computer hump” were used to describe maladies said to be caused by making repetitive movements with the thumbs and by sitting hunched over for too long.21 Although mass media hyperbole makes it hard to know how much stock to put into these concerns, some studies suggest that excessive computer use and gaming can lead to lower-back problems and neck or shoulder pain.22 In fact, studies have shown that adolescents ages 14–18 who sit at a screen four to five hours a day are more likely to have neck and shoulder problems.23 If a player ignores the pain and does not take steps to improve his or her posture, back deformities can result. Children’s backs seem to be analogous to bonsai trees: if they are constantly pushed in one direction, they will grow in that direction.24
It is important to recognize that these physical phenomena are not caused by games themselves. They are caused by too many repeated movements, by sitting or working in the same position for too long, or by a combination of the two. It is a reality, however, that adolescents spend a significant portion of their day sitting. A recent Irish study indicated that teen girls spend nearly twenty hours a day sitting or lying down.25 Because of the problems associated with prolonged sitting, sitting is now considered a serious side effect of screen media use.26 In fact, the lament “sitting is the new smoking” is often made by health care practitioners. On the one hand, these findings highlight the importance of teaching children to alternate gaming or other sedentary activities with physical exercise. On the other hand, they highlight an opportunity for the gaming industry to combat the usual sedentary nature of gaming. And there are already efforts to do so—with an influx of so-called exergames targeting both children and adults.
Exergames require players to physically move in order to advance the game. Depending on the game, the movement can vary from relatively little effort to moderate or even vigorous effort. Meta-analytic work indicates that the energy expenditure of exergames is similar to that of more traditional physical exercise.27 For example, in Dance Dance Revolution, players must mimic dance patterns displayed onscreen to popular music—and the movements increase in complexity and speed during gameplay. In Zombies, Run! (a mobile phone app), the player is challenged to run away from zombies as fast as possible and to seek refuge in one of humanity’s last remaining outposts. And in the Nintendo Wii game Punch-Out!!, the player must try to physically punch an opponent, and to dodge and duck the opponent’s punches, in a classic boxing game.
Research into the effects of these and similar exergames is still in its infancy, but the scant evidence seen thus far indicates that such games—rather than promoting sedentary behaviors and negative health effects—may be an effective means of fighting obesity and promoting a healthier lifestyle. Interestingly, this benefit seems to be particularly true for teens who play these games cooperatively rather than competitively. Cooperative play may foster a team bond, which in turn may increase teens’ motivation to persist during a physically demanding game.28
Cognitive Effects
While the physical effects of gaming, particularly the negative ones, tend to make most media headlines, gaming’s cognitive effects have also received increased attention in recent years. Cognitive effects of games focus on knowledge, comprehension, and learning. Research in this area often falls under the umbrella term “serious gaming,” which has come into vogue during the new millennium but was coined in 1970.29 Conversations about serious gaming most often occur along with discussions of classroom education. Why is this? Modern educational theories are based on the principle that learning is most effective when it is active, experience based, and problem based, and when it offers immediate feedback—all features that digital games can offer. Scholars have thus begun to ask what role gaming may have in the classroom
. Can it replace the teacher, or, perhaps more realistically, augment teacher instruction? Can it serve as a tool for more personalized education? Or does its inclusion in the classroom, as some teachers fear, result in students’ belief that all learning must be fun?
To date, there have been a number of studies on the effects of games in the classroom. Overall, they indicate that gaming can have an important place in the classroom. For example, a meta-analysis of 129 studies revealed that students’ knowledge of subjects such as biology and history increased with the use of games in the classroom.30 Similarly, a review of more than 300 studies found evidence for the benefits of gaming on language learning and history (but less so for science and math knowledge).31 Serious games seem to be particularly effective for learning when they are augmented by other instruction methods and when youth engage in cooperative play.32 Findings like these suggest that serious gaming may be a valuable addition to classrooms. That said, researchers must still tackle many questions when it comes to serious gaming. We need more research on the longer-term effects of serious games, on the types of games most likely to support learning, and on the types of children most likely to benefit from games in the classroom.33
The cognitive effects of gaming can be seen also in the home environment. Research in this area started in the 1980s, spurred by the often-cited book Mind and Media by Patricia Greenfield.34 Hundreds of studies have since been published on the effects of games on intelligence, spatial awareness, multitasking, inhibitory control (the ability to repress unwanted information), working memory (the ability to temporarily store information), and visual processing (the ability to quickly spot targets, objects, or changes). In a recent meta-analysis, Kasey Powers and colleagues summarized the effects of these studies.35 The analysis suggests that gaming has a positive effect on most cognitive skills—particularly on intelligence and spatial awareness. And these effects do not seem to be limited to a specific genre. Instead, a variety of game genres—including the often-maligned action games—seem to offer cognitive benefits.
Intelligence
One of the hottest topics in gaming and cognition is intelligence. Games appeal strongly to our problem-solving abilities. Does this mean that the more we play games, the more intelligent we become? It was long thought that intelligence, or “cognitive ability,” was a quality inherited from one’s parents and was therefore unchangeable, or at least difficult to change. Thanks to heredity research, we now know that only about half of children’s intelligence can be explained by hereditary factors.36 This means that environmental factors play a significant role in the development of intelligence. In chapter 2, we mentioned the Flynn effect—the term used to describe the strong increase in youth’s intelligence test scores over the last six decades. As discussed, this increase is mainly found on intelligence tests of fluid intelligence, which involves the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations, independent of acquired knowledge.37 Since the tasks to measure fluid intelligence often resemble those in games, it is not surprising that researchers suspect that gaming is one cause of the increase in fluid intelligence scores.38
If gaming is indeed responsible for the increase in fluid intelligence that has been observed among youth, then frequent gamers should score higher than occasional gamers on this type of intelligence. Several studies have investigated this assumption. In the meta-analysis of Powers and colleagues, studies were divided into two types: quasi-experiments that compared existing groups of heavy and light gamers, and true experiments (brain-training studies) that measured gamers’ intelligence after they have had some game training. Some of the brain-training studies used games specially designed for the studies, and others use existing commercial games, such as Tetris, Rise of Nations, or Counter-Strike.
The quasi-experiments demonstrated that heavy gamers scored higher on intelligence tests than light gamers or nongamers.39 But these studies suffer from the chicken-or-egg problem. They cannot rule out the explanation that intelligent adolescents are more likely to play video games. The true experiments, which are able to control for causality, yielded mixed results. The studies using commercially available games showed no effect of gameplaying on intelligence scores.40 But the studies using specially designed games did find an effect. For example, Susanne Jaeggi and colleagues found that after a month of game training, children scored higher than before on two fluid intelligence tests.41 This effect primarily held for children who were interested in the game, and who felt less frustration as the game increased in difficulty. This result is consistent with media effects theories that argue that media are most likely to have effects on media users who have a particular interest in a medium or its content.
Spatial Awareness and Hand-Eye Coordination
Much of the success of human evolution has depended on our being able to orient ourselves in an environment, to navigate, and to remember the shapes of visual objects, and such skills remain essential in today’s world. Unsurprisingly, spatial awareness is a form of intelligence that is part of virtually all intelligence tests. Everyone needs it for tasks like putting the right lid on a pot or finding the way home. And specialized professionals such as surgeons, airline pilots, and architects greatly rely on spatial awareness. Hand-eye coordination is the ability to immediately and correctly react with one’s hands to what one sees. For dentistry, watchmaking, and other professions that require fine motor skills, good hand-eye coordination is a must.
Spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination are essential for gaming. A gamer has to remember and manipulate objects and be able to move his or her character or avatar. Perhaps it is not that surprising, then, that both quasi-experiments and brain-training studies have shown that gaming has a positive effect on spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination.42 These effects are found for both youth and adults, and across myriad game genres—although they seem particularly robust for games that rely on spatial visualization performance.43
The effects of gaming can be seen in the brain, too. For example, in a brain-training study, forty-eight students were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: half were passive controls (they did not play any games), and half played Super Mario 64 on a Nintendo DS for at least thirty minutes a day over a period of two months.44 The gameplayers had to navigate through a virtual world and collect items. After the two-month period, the brains of all participants were scanned. The gamers had more gray matter in their right posterior hippocampus, an area of the brain that plays a role in spatial processing and navigation. In addition, gray matter had grown in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum. According to the researchers, these areas play a role in integrating sensory information with behavioral intentions, which are necessary for hand-eye coordination.
Social-Emotional Effects
What do you think of when you think of a gamer? Most often, the stereotypical image that comes to mind is a socially incompetent, pimply-faced nerd who neglects his friends, withdraws to his darkened bedroom, and becomes progressively more isolated. This image took hold in the 1980s, when gaming was dominated by teenage males. And yet even in gaming’s earliest days, this image was inaccurate. For example, in 1985, American research demonstrated that playing video games brought parents and children together and seemed to have a positive influence on family relationships.45 Similar findings emerged in other countries as well. For example, an Australian study showed virtually no differences in social adjustment between adolescents who frequently played games and those who played rarely. In fact, gamers actually reported feeling more attached to other family members and peers than did nongamers.46 And in a study of more than 1,200 World of Warcraft players, 67 percent of respondents (teens and young adults) listed social reasons as a key motivation for gameplay. The great majority of the players noted that World of Warcraft provided them with opportunities to maintain existing relationships with their family and friends and to form new friendships.47 Indeed, rather than isolating young people from the offline
world, gaming seems to provide them with important additional opportunities to form friendships and maintain family relationships.
Game Addiction
Although games may provide youth with opportunities for social development, they have certain features that keep children and adolescents glued to their screens. This fascination for digital games could be seen even in the early days of digital games. In 1984, for example, researchers demonstrated that children who had received a new video game would rather play their new game than do anything else. But for most gamers, the infatuation soon wore off. After a few weeks, the frequency with which they played games had dropped back to the level before receiving the new game.48
A small group of children and adolescents, however, remain under the long-term spell of gaming. These youth find it incredibly difficult to stop playing, they become restless if they cannot play anymore, and they can think of nothing besides their game. Moreover, they often sacrifice other important activities, such as homework, sports, and family meetings, in order to play. This small group is often referred to as pathological gamers or, in popular parlance, game addicts. Pathological gaming is characterized by continued obsessive and excessive gaming that the player cannot control, despite the problems it causes.49
For a long time, there has been a debate among psychiatrists about whether pathological gaming should be recognized as a true addiction. Traditionally, addictions were legitimate only if they involved the abuse of substances such as alcohol or drugs. Later, substance-related addictions were joined by behavioral, or nonsubstance, addictions, such as gambling. Since 2013, pathological gaming has been included as a tentative behavioral addiction in the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the handbook that psychiatrists use to make diagnoses. DSM-5 calls it Internet gaming disorder (IGD). A diagnosis of IGD is based on nine criteria, including preoccupation, tolerance, deception, and conflict (see table 12.3). Gamers who meet at least five of the nine criteria in the course of a year can be considered disordered gamers.
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