Why can't it be simple?! I get what they're trying to prove and do, and I may be biased, but I truly just believe that parents need to pay attention to their children and set expectations. Everything will affect grades, and as you said, mental health is a huge one. My wife's a social worker and she has told me that a lot of the times a child is getting bad grades, something's happening in the household. Again, videogames can be addicting and can affect a child, but the kids are buying the games themselves. Yap done.
This is interesting. But I think the attempt to distil it into quantifiable research is letting gaming off the hook.
The research points to the x factor: motivated students with a good support structure will do better, regardless if they play games or not. By that logic, unmotivated students will do less well, especially when they have a fun distraction, such as video games.
Anecdotally, I can confirm that. I spent way too much time playing Mortal Kombat at the local arcade or Sierra Online games on my PC instead of studying, and I did it because I was more motivated to play games than to study.
Games are fantastic for distraction. It used to be TV, then games. I bet there's a similar correlation with online media today (though I think games are a special case since they make you feel like you're accomplishing something).
It’s worth emphasizing that the design of this study can’t establish causation between video games playing and its correlated variables. The directed figure from the authors is a bit misleading because the arrows only go one direction. Meaning, for example, children with expectations of higher educational achievement may be less likely to play video games, NOT that playing video games leads to lower educational achievement expectations. The variables are simply related, without an experimental intervention, they cannot establish the directionality of that relationship.
Why can't it be simple?! I get what they're trying to prove and do, and I may be biased, but I truly just believe that parents need to pay attention to their children and set expectations. Everything will affect grades, and as you said, mental health is a huge one. My wife's a social worker and she has told me that a lot of the times a child is getting bad grades, something's happening in the household. Again, videogames can be addicting and can affect a child, but the kids are buying the games themselves. Yap done.
This is interesting. But I think the attempt to distil it into quantifiable research is letting gaming off the hook.
The research points to the x factor: motivated students with a good support structure will do better, regardless if they play games or not. By that logic, unmotivated students will do less well, especially when they have a fun distraction, such as video games.
Anecdotally, I can confirm that. I spent way too much time playing Mortal Kombat at the local arcade or Sierra Online games on my PC instead of studying, and I did it because I was more motivated to play games than to study.
Games are fantastic for distraction. It used to be TV, then games. I bet there's a similar correlation with online media today (though I think games are a special case since they make you feel like you're accomplishing something).
It’s worth emphasizing that the design of this study can’t establish causation between video games playing and its correlated variables. The directed figure from the authors is a bit misleading because the arrows only go one direction. Meaning, for example, children with expectations of higher educational achievement may be less likely to play video games, NOT that playing video games leads to lower educational achievement expectations. The variables are simply related, without an experimental intervention, they cannot establish the directionality of that relationship.
Absolutely!! This exact point is on my wishlist of things for future video game research!!