A new study suggests that playing video games may benefit a child's intelligence.
Many parents do their best to keep their kids from playing video games all day every day. Children have always been encouraged to forgo screens in favour of playing outside.
As reported by the Conversation, Scientists investigated how video games affect the minds of children, by examining more than 5,000 children aged 10 to 12.
And some may find the results, which are published in scientific reports, quite surprising.
Method
Children were asked how many hours a day they spent on social media, watching videos or TV, and playing video games. The answer was: a lot of hours.
On average, children spent two and a half hours a day watching online videos or TV programmes, half an hour socialising online, and one hour playing video games.
In total, that’s four hours a day for the average child and six hours for the top 25% – a large portion of a child’s free time.
And other reports found that this has increased dramatically over the decades. Screens were around in previous generations, but now they truly define childhood.
Children were asked to complete a series of tasks in order to create what is called an 'intelligence index', as intelligence is often measured through performance on a wide range of cognitive tests.
How does this study differ others?
This is not the first time someone has studied the effect of screens on intelligence, but research, so far, has produced mixed results.
But this study has one factor which sets it above all the rest.
As written in the Conversation: "The novelty of our study is that we took genes and socioeconomic backgrounds into account."
"Only a few studies so far have considered socioeconomic status (household income, parental education and neighbourhood quality), and no study had accounted for genetic effects.
"Genes matter because intelligence is highly heritable. If unaccounted for, these factors could mask the true effect of screen time on children’s intelligence. "
The results
The study found links between below-average intelligence to the children aged ten they asked how much they played video games
However, gaming was not found to be linked with intelligence. These screen time results are mostly similar to previous research.
But when the children were followed up with later, researchers found that gaming had a positive effect on intelligence.
The Conversation reported: "While children who played more video games at ten years were on average no more intelligent than children who didn’t game, they showed the most gains in intelligence after two years, in both boys and girls."
Why this matters
According to The Conversation, these findings show a positive effect of video games on intelligence.
The results are also similar to previous studies, which suggest that cognitive abilities aren't fixed, but can be trained.
As for other screen time, the many hours of instagramming and messaging did not benefit children’s intelligence, but it was not negative either.
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