"Julian! Are you done with your homework?"
One sec, I'm playing an online game.
"Well pause it."
You can't, you can't, you can't pause an online game...[sobbing]
What up, players, Julian here for DNews.
Video games have been blamed for the decline of children since pong…
The game pong… with the paddles.
Look it up.
Anyway whenever something goes wrong with the youths, invariably someone will point
a finger towards video games.
But is it possible someone could play a videogame and still do well in school?
According to a new study from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, it is in fact possible
to enjoy video games regularly and not become a flunkie.
The study drew data from PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, an international
survey that tests the math, reading, and science skills of 15 year old students.
The survey also collects information like how much time a student spends online playing
games and their parent’s education level and occupation.1
Using data from 12,004 Australian students, the researchers assessed the correlation between
playing video games online and academic performance.1 They found that students who played games
almost every day performed substantially better in all categories, scoring 15 points above
average in math and reading, and 17 points above average in science.1
How or if video games had an impact on performance is not something that can be figured out from
this sort of analysis; it’s a classic case of correlation does not necessarily equal
causation.
The author of the study, Alberto Posso1, suggested a few different possible explanations.
Maybe the games are having a direct impact when they use concepts from math, science,
or language as essential gameplay elements, forcing players to master these concepts to
progress in game.1 It’s also possible that people who enjoy math and reading prefer to
play these types of games anyway.
Interestingly the data also shows that more games don’t always mean students are more
smarterer.
While scores generally went up the more students played, they dropped again for students who
played every single day,1 possibly because of the opportunity cost of playing games instead
of studying.
This isn’t the first study to look into the relationship between academic performance
and video games, and past research is a bit of a mixed bag.
Another study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology in 2016 found
that children age 6 to 11 who play video games are more likely to do well in school.
In 2009 PLoS One published a review of PISA results that found playing games had no big
impact one way or another.
And a study from the University of Missouri-Columbia in the year 2000 found a slight negative correlation
between GPA and time spent playing video games.
So this new study out of Australia isn’t exploring a new idea, but it does claim to
control for outside factors like a student’s household and school environment better than
previous studies.
One thing the study didn’t mention though is what games these students were playing.
If you’re a gamer you know not all games are the same.
There are adventure and puzzle games, platformers, MOBAs, RPGs, MMORPGS, RTSes, FPSes, pretty
much every acronym you can think of.
Could the genre have an impact on learning?
Some research says it does.
A 2009 study in Issues in Mental Health Nursing concluded violent games correlated to attention
problems while educational games were associated with good academic achievement.
A study in Educational Technology Research and Development from 2008 argued that massively
multiplayer games promote higher order thinking.
A 2005 paper from the Educause Evolving Technologies Committee suggested strategy games foster
an understanding of economics and history.
An engineering professor at Northern Illinois University found students were more engaged
when their homework was to use numerical methods to make a digital car navigate a racetrack.
So if the content is good and the game doesn’t become too time consuming, it looks like it’s
possible to be a gamer and a good student.
You may be wondering what happens in people’s
brains when they play video games.
Well good news, because Trace has a video on exactly that, and you can find it right
here.
Does gaming ever cut into your academics, or do you think it’s helped you in some
way?