If you have followed me on this site, you know I write for a gaming magazine. I follow game news, and have recently heard about a study that says video games "cause" mental health issues. I ended up writing an article on this issue, and linked to some of the original material within it if you take the time to look.
www.goozernation.com/video-games/index.p...tal-health-problemsq

My question is to get a counterpoint from Dads out there. Do you feel there's any truth to a study like this? Are you concerned for your kids' mental health from their hobbies? or does this seem like a load of malarkey to you? Just wanna see what other people out there think. Who knows, you might help me write another article.

Hi Ryan,

Interesting topic. I consider myself a light-to-moderate gamer. I started with coin-ops in the 80s, and to this day I've usually got a game or two that I'm mucking around with.

I don't think that games cause mental health issues, if they did, myself and a number of other people would already be straitjacketed and in padded cells. My concern as a new father is the amount of time that gaming can take. My own parents never let us have a console, and I didn't have a PC of my own until I was halfway through college. In retrospect, I am grateful for that. At the time, I thought I was deprived, but now, I realize how nice it was to have a childhood in which I wasn't constantly shackled to a screen. (This is not to say that I was not at least *partially* shackled to a screen - as early as elementary school, we had computers available to us in the school library, and I spent a lot of time banging around on them during school hours).

After college, when I had some disposable income of my own, I got into PC gaming fairly heavily, and while it was fun, I'm not sure it was that good of a use of my time.

I'm gaming much less these days. My wife still think I game too much - I'm probably doing about 5 hours per week. It is a foregone conclusion that my son is going to see me gaming, and be intrigued, and want to get in on the fun. How to let him do that, without turning him into an addict, is something that I still need to figure out. Thankfully I've got some time to work out a strategy, he's not yet two months old.

Roger in Portland

Ryan,

I'm with you -- completely frustrated with all the conflicting research that is out there regarding kids and video gaming. My stance in the past has been pretty clearly pro-gaming, including recommending this title for younger kids as recently as last week.

I'm so confused that one of my New Year's resolutions was to survey the research and do a complete re-examination of my screen time policies overall.

My guess is that what they will discover is that gaming can have ill effects of kids with certain kinds of underlying, and perhaps undiagnosed conditions. And that for most kids maintaining some kind of balance, having limits, is key.

How do you guys set limits?

X number of minutes per day, X number of hours per week? Is gaming a reward that is synched to other things, like doing chores or getting good grades?
Does family game time (playing rock band together for instance) count as part of the time limit, or is that considered family time?



Roger in PDX

Gaming definitely has it's place and usefulness on many levels. I think in moderation, it can be a good fun learning tool. Generally speaking, I would prefer my child play a couple hours of video games a week rather than watch a couple hours of TV. It's interactive, mind finger coordination, and requires split second thinking and reactions.

I purchased an ellyptical trainer from a commercial gym cheap off of Craigslist and have a playstation 2 leftover from an old roomate. NHL09 from Replay Games for $9. When I don't feel like getting out on the bike in the rain on the dark winter nights here in the Pacific Northwest, playing 2 or 3 games of NHL09 while on the ellyptical trainer is a great way to get in 45-60 minutes of cardio.

The car race games can be really addicitive, so I don't own any.

My buddy is in the (crane) Operators Union. He says the skill of the young crane operators is at levels the union has never seen before because all these guys grew up mastering joysticks while playing video games; a skill that transfers very well to crane operatorion. And I never get tired of watching my buddy make $80k a year runninig cranes.

Like most things, moderation has to be the key. It began with the caveman sitting in front of the fire, poking and stoking and roasting all night while he kept it going long after the women of the tribe had gone to bed. Then tv, the internet, and gaming. Something about it is fascinates us.

The studies find zero causal evidence.

They would be otherwise ignored if they stated it outright. I hate the misleading nature of such studies.