Many parents have long been under the impression that video games are something that kids should use only as a past time and they work hard to prevent their kids from spending ‘too much time’ on them. Studies have been done in an attempt to prove that games cause children to be more violent, less attentive, and more socially inept then others. All of those studies, along with the negative views many parents have on ‘violent games’ have made it difficult to prove the usefulness of video games, however a recent study was just released that may just change parent’s minds.
A study was conducted on children over at Michigan State University and was spearheaded by Linda Jackson, the professor of psychology at the school. The study involved five hundred 12yr old children who took the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. The Torrance Tests, often abbreviated as TTAT, are a set of commonly used tests that are administered by a trained psychologist and generally take about 90 minutes long.
The researchers found that the video games actually resulted in the children scoring higher than the children who did not play video games. This discovery was also accompanied by others. On top of the children who played video games being more creative, they found that no other type of technology interaction caused an increase in creativity; they tested internet and mobile phone usage as well. On top of this, the researchers found that the type of video game played by the children (be it violent or not) had no bearing on the positive affect that the games had on their creativity.
These researchers from Michigan University were the first to do a study that focused on the impact technology and games had on creativity and the results were astounding and yet somewhat not surprising as well.
For those curious about the specifics on the actual research done on this study then you can read the full article that was published by the Michigan State University here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563211002147
The study will be featured next year in the journal ‘Computers in Human Behaviour’ and the results bode well for the future. Undoubtedly more research will be preformed regarding this matter and hopefully the full extent to which video games affect youths will be discovered in the future. Until then parents can, without a guilty conscience, remove their children’s phones and tell them to go play video games!