thought the problem was simple, but soon I was evaluating mass and
surface area, buoyancy and wind resistance, ballast, pitch, and yaw. I
also received a crash course in the solid American values of
perseverance, creativity, and, by the day’s end, the acceptance of failure.
These days, when I see childen and young adults playing video games, I
think back to that Massachusetts summer. Like a game of stick-boat race,
video games are undeniably fun. The question is: Do they pay the same
dividends?
The issue is more pressing now than ever. The video game industry
this year made more than $47 billion, more than half again as much as
Hollywood. But that is old news; what’s changing is the amount of time
children and adolescents report playing video games per day. A recent
poll published by the U.S. Department of Health stated that the average
child plays two hours on weekdays, and four hours per day on weekends.
For many, many children—perhaps the majority of children—video
games have become the primary mode of having fun.
This is a big deal. Despite its name, goofing around is crucial to a
child’s development. Dr. Maude Glazier, a neuroscientist at the University
of Chicago, in February published a study in Nature titled “When Brains
Have Fun.” Her experiment was elegant in its simplicity. Dr. Glazier took
brain scans of children at play and compared these scans to those of
children at rest. The images were remarkable: Whole swaths of the brain
light up during recreation. “The resulting gains in neuroplasticity, in areas
as disparate as the occipital lobe and the corpus callosum,” Dr. Glazier
writes, “cannot be overstated.” The question, then, is whether video
games have the same salutary effect as other types of play.
People have long argued that video games are harmful to the
developing child. A headline from the New Orleans Times-Picayune in
1986 reads, “Video Games Conclusively Linked to Increased Violence in
Youngsters.” One cover of the New York Post in 2007 put it more
poetically: “Pixels Poison Prepubescents.” This argument, that violent
video games produce violent youths, crops up every two or three years,
then dies down. It is ridiculous on its face. Ever since the days of painting
bulls on cave walls, humans have been able to discern between
representation and reality. Just as Super Mario Bros. did not cause an
uptick in plumbers or jumping on turtles, Grand Theft Auto does not
inspire teenagers to ride tanks through the streets of our cities.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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