Video Games and Boys
February 4, 2010
MANY PEOPLE argue that video games are harmless. They may even improve coordination and certain types of intelligence. That’s one common claim. Video games clearly are not destructive of personal success in many cases. Some people are able to play them in moderation. But there is conclusive evidence that they affect school performance for males.
According to Leonard Sax, physician, popular writer on sex differences in childhood and adolescence, and author of Boys Adrift, published in 2007:
A series of studies over the past seven years has demonstrated clearly and unambiguously that the more time your child spends playing video games, the less likely he is to do well in school – whether he is in elementary school, middle school, high school, or college. This negative association between academic performance and playing video games remains strong even when investigators control for all possible confounding variables, such as personality traits. I regard this finding as “clear and unambiguous” because all studies of this question have yielded similar results.