વિડીયો ગેમ્સની અસરો: બાળકોને હવે વિડીયો ગેમ્સ રમવાથી રોકશો નહીં! બુદ્ધિમત્તાનો વિકાસ થશે, અભ્યાસમાં દાવો

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Effects of Video Games: Don't Stop Kids from Playing Video Games Now! Intelligence will develop, the study claims

Parents whose children play video games for hours feel guilty and some worry that it will not allow their child to develop their intelligence well. In fact, this is a topic on which scientists have not agreed for years.

Effects of Video Games: Parents of children who play video games for hours feel guilty and some worry that it will not allow their child's intelligence to develop properly. In fact, this is a topic on which scientists have not agreed for years. A new study examines how video games affect children's brains.

How was the study done on playing video games?

More than 5,000 children between the ages of 10 and 12 were interviewed and tested in a joint study by Torkel Klingberg, the Karolinska Institute and Bruno Sauce, Bridge University Amsterdam / Stockholm. The results, published in Scientific Reports, will come as a surprise to many. The children were asked how many hours a day they spend on social media, watching videos or TV and playing video games. The children's answer was: many hours. On average, children spend two and a half hours a day watching online videos or TV programs, half an hour socializing online, and one hour playing video games.

This time, on the whole, was four hours a day for the average child and six hours for the top 25 percent - a significant portion of the child's free time. Other reports suggest that it has grown rapidly over the decades. Screens were around in previous generations, but now they have really become a part of children's lives.

Is the screen a bad thing for kids?

The answer to this question is quite difficult. Screens can have both advantages and disadvantages for children's developing brains and depends on the outcome you are looking for. This study specifically focuses on the effect of screen time on intelligence. Intelligence is an important quality of our life and it is also the basis of a child's future income, happiness and longevity. In research, it is often measured as performance over a wide range of cognitive tests.

For this study, the Intelligence Index was created from five functions: reading comprehension and vocabulary, ability to pay attention and performance on work (including functional memory, flexible thinking and self-control), visual-spatial processing (e.g. spinning). Evaluate the things around your mind) and the ability to learn on multiple tests. This is not the first time anyone has studied the effect of the screen on intelligence, but research has so far yielded mixed results. So what's special this time? The novelty of this study is that it takes into account genes and socioeconomic background.

What the study found

The study found that when a ten-year-old child was first asked how much time he spends in video games and socializing, both were associated with lower-than-average intelligence. Meanwhile, gaming was not at all connected with intelligence. These results for screen time are largely consistent with previous research. But when these results were later analyzed, it was found that gaming has a positive and meaningful effect on intelligence.

It was found that children who played more video games by the age of ten were not on average more intelligent than children who did not play video games, and two years later their intelligence increased, both in girls and boys. For example, a child who was in the top 17 percent for hours spent on screen had an IQ increase of about 2.5 points more than the average child of two years. This is evidence of the beneficial, causal effect of video games on intelligence.