14 DAY TRIAL // A new study compiled by scientists at Yale University, which has been published in the November issue of the magazine Pediatrics, has found that video games are not harmful as long as those who play do not spend most of their time engaged in them.
The new study is based around another study which surveyed 4,000 high school students and found that frequency of game playing was not an issues for most of the group as most of the gamers polled spent less than seven hours in one week engaged in them.
Some of the gamers has impulse control issues but they could also be linked to other activities they were engaged with and with their normal development.
The Yale study says that the boys who played video games had better grades then those who did not, on average, and were less like to smoke cigarettes and engage in consumption of banned substances like marijuana.
Only 5 percent of them had behavior patterns like relieving tension only through gaming, having potent urges to game that they cannot control, trying to limit time spent on video game and failing.
The study also says that those girls who are attracted to gaming are more likely to have aggressive personalities and can carry weapons on school grounds and get into fight with their peers.
Rani Desai, an associate professor of psychiatry and public health at the Yale University School of Medicine, stated, “The study suggests that, in and of itself, gaming does not appear to be dangerous to kids. We found virtually no association between gaming and negative health behaviors, particularly in boys. However, a small but not insignificant proportion of kids find themselves unable to control their gaming.”
Christopher J. Ferguson, who is an assistant professor of clinical and forensic psychology at Texas A&M, stated, “This study shows that, for the vast majority of children, video games are pretty harmless”, who added that, “if a child can’t turn off the games after a reasonable amount of time, isn’t doing homework, isn’t socializing with other kids — all can be signs of a problem that may need to be addressed.”