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New evidence shows that playing video games has an unexpected effect on kids' IQ

Parents are going to have to rethink things a bit.

via Canva/Photos

Three children enjoying video games.

Since Pong first became a massive hit in the early ‘70s, parents have warned their kids that playing video games will rot their brains. How it not? Most gaming involves kids sitting alone in their homes, mashing buttons and a single game could go on for hours. There’s a good reason why parents should be concerned about the amount of time their kids spend staring at screens, but does gaming have an upside?

A 2022 report from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has found that playing video games actually increases a child’s IQ. "Our results support the claim that screen time generally doesn't impair children's cognitive abilities, and that playing video games can actually help boost intelligence," neuroscientist Torkel Klingberg from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden said in 2022.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers looked at nearly 10,000 kids between the ages of 9 and 10 who, on average, spent 2.5 hours a day watching TV or online videos, 1 hour playing video games and 30 minutes socializing online with friends or family. Two years later, they compared data on 5,000 of these kids and found that those who spent more time than the norm playing video games had an IQ increase 2.5 points above the average rise.

The IQ point increase was based on their performance in tasks involving self-control, flexible thinking, memory, reading comprehension and visual-spatial processing.



“We didn’t examine the effects of screen behaviour on physical activity, sleep, well-being, or school performance, so we can’t say anything about that,” says Torkel Klingberg, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet.

The researchers also note that there was no increase in IQ points for those who watched more TV or spent more time on social media than the norm.

Are video games bad for kids?

Kids who run to share this story with their parents should be careful because IQ is just one factor affected by playing video games. "We didn't examine the effects of screen behavior on physical activity, sleep, well-being, or school performance, so we can't say anything about that," said Klingberg. "We'll now be studying the effects of other environmental factors and how the cognitive effects relate to childhood brain development."



The study is a shot in the arm for those who believe video games are good for kids and those who like to play them. However, we know that video games can cause serious problems if played excessively. Studies show that gaming is associated with obesity because when you sit in front of a screen all day, you don’t have much time for exercise. Excessive gaming has also been associated with depression, anxiety, aggression, sleep deprivation, insomnia and circadian rhythm disorders.

Video game addiction has also become a serious problem and may affect over 60 million people worldwide. Parents should be wary of signs of video game addiction in their children, which include a loss of interest in other hobbies, withdrawal symptoms when they're not gaming, and aggression.

As with anything, the key to getting maximum benefits from gaming is to make the activity part of a balanced lifestyle that includes plenty of physical activity, socializing with friends, lots of sleep, good nutrition and a fair amount of reading time. The Child Mind Institute says kids over 6 should spend at most 1 hour a day playing video games on school days and 2 on the weekends. Kids under 6 shouldn't exceed 30 minutes a day playing video games.

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Parenting

Mom gets savvy and tells her daughter to defrost dinner via Roblox

21st century problems call for 21st century solutions.

ChaCha Watson Facebook

Mom gets savvy and tells her daughter to defrost dinner via Roblox.

Parents have been contending with kids and video games since the first arcade game was introduced. Kids get immersed in the fictional world and forget—or sometimes downright ignore—that there are responsibilities to take care of outside of the game. A mom from Chicago, ChaCha Watson, used the Roblox video game to get her daughter's full attention.

Watson repeatedly called her 11-year-old daughter, Miracle, to tell her to take dinner out of the freezer to defrost but Miracle didn't answer. Instead of jumping to the worst-case scenario, Watson knew exactly what her daughter was up to and how to get her attention.

Miracle was immersed in the video game Roblox instead of answering her mom's phone calls, so Watson decided to join. Yep, the savvy mom hopped into the Roblox game from her location and jumped into the car with her daughter's avatar to tell her to take the lasagna out of the freezer. She shared the screenshots of the exchange on Facebook where it went viral.

Watson told Today, “She just so happens to be in the beginning stage when you first pop up on the game. So when I popped up, she just so happened to pull up. And I said, ‘You see me calling you!’ and then she was like, ‘I'm sorry mom.’" Roblox has been around for a while now. It's an interactive game where kids can create avatars that look like them, build things and apparently, drive cars. Watson had been playing the game with her daughter as a way to bond with her, she told Today.

If you've ever been a "latchkey kid" or just the oldest child at home while your parents step out, then you know the cardinal sin is to forget to take the food out for dinner. There's really no way to fake your way out of unthawed food because the rock solid item will tell on you every time. Before video games, parents didn't have the luxury of popping into one of their kids' video games to remind them to unthaw dinner.

Parents across social media are loving this mother's ingenuity of getting her daughter's attention. One parent tagged a friend and said, "We gotta figure out how to do this."

Another person replied, "Screaming! It was the 2nd pic 'It’s your mom, I know you saw me calling you,'" with multiple rolling on the floor laughing emojis.

It seems that most parents commenting on the post are planning to download Roblox and Minecraft to drop in on their kids when they're being ignored. But Watson advised that parents actually try playing the game with their kids and not just download it to tell them what to do, according to Today.

Watson told Today, "Being a single parent, you just want to make sure that you're spending time with your kids. That's really important to me — to make sure I'm spending quality time with her. So I downloaded Roblox and … that was just one of the best things ever."

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Equality

The Oregon Trail game got a revamp with more authentic Native American representation

Gameloft/Twitter

Anyone who came of age during the late 80's and early 90s is at least somewhat familiar with The Oregon Trail game. As one of the most popular computer-based video games of all time, it's a well-loved classic for late Gen Xers and early Millennials.

The game was designed to be educational, to teach kids about the Lewis & Clark expedition and westward expansion of the United States in the mid-1800s. Players were part of a wagon train traveling out west, encountering various challenges and pitfalls along the way, including the dreaded dysentery that led to countless players' demise.

Kids loved it. But unfortunately, not all of its lessons were accurate. In fact, the representation of Native Americans in the game perpetuated common stereotypes and myths about the Indigenous people of the time. Even one of the co-creators of the original game has said in recent years that it should have included a Native perspective.

Now, a new version of the game has been released through Apple Arcade. Developers at the company Gameloft are targeting the newest installment at the same generation who played it as kids, but in the new version, they took conscious steps to make sure their representations of Native Americans in the game were more authentic.

In this version, for the first time in the game's history, Native American characters are playable. And to make sure the characters are portrayed accurately, developers hired three Indigenous historians to weigh in on the game design and suggest improvements.

First, the historian listened to early test music for the game and said the flutes and drums were overkill. They also nixed the use of broken English.

The game's creative director Jarrad Trudgen took their advice—and the reasoning behind it—to heart. "It's like a trope to make Native American people seem primitive somehow," he told NPR, "when actually there were a lot of bilingual or polylingual Native Americans at that time."

The historians weighed in names and imagery of Native characters as well.

As a University of Nebraska historian with Lac Courte Oreilles ancestry, Margaret Huettl had access to old photos and drawings, which she researched to get a more accurate picture of what different tribes' clothign and style would have been. "Initially, all of the Native people [in the revamped game] had braids," Huettl told NPR. "And I think we suggested, maybe they don't all have to have braids."

She said she is glad the developers listened to her and the other Indigenous scholars as they suggested appropriate names for characters, as well as roles they could play beyond trappers or guides.

One of the most significant changes was the elimination of the bow and arrow—something that Trudgen initially wanted to keep. But when Huettl explained that Native Americans at that time were much more likely to have a rifle, and that bows and arrows were more of a stereotype, he and the game developers understood.

"That wasn't our intention at all, obviously," Trudgen said. "We were just coming to it sort of as a naive 'bow and arrows are cool' angle."

That's exactly the sort of oblivious misstep consulting with the historians was designed to help them avoid, so the bows and arrows went.

According to Game Rant, the new version of The Oregon Trail includes a disclaimer from the developer, explaining its intent to properly represent Native American perspectives in this installment. It also points out the truth—that the Westward expansion the game is based around was not a positive experience for Native Americans. It was brutal colonization that still has repercussions today.

While it's not possible to encapsulate the full scope of history in a video game, adding authentic Indigenous representation to one of the most popular educational games of all time is a vital step in the right direction. Kudos to Gameloft for taking the time and consulting with the people who can make sure it's done right.

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Parkland parents helped shut down this 'active shooter' video game.

A video game simulating a school shooting has been shut down before its launch — largely due to Parkland parents denouncing it.

Following in the footsteps of both Roseanne Barr's TV show and problematic scenes from the movie "Show Dogs," a video game called "Active Shooter" has been nixed due to public outcry. The game simulates a school shooting and allows players to play either the school shooter or a SWAT team member.

Screenshots of gameplay released by the creator paint a horrific scene: If you're playing the shooter, you use your semi-automatic rifle to gun down students, teachers, law enforcement, and anyone else you feel like murdering in a school building. A digital counter keeps track of how many civilians and cops you've killed.

Screenshot via Revived Games/Acid Publishing.

The game was published by the game studio Acid Publishing of Moscow and was slated for release on June 6 through Valve Corp.'s online gaming store Steam.

Parents of victims of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting raised their voices loud and clear to denounce the game.

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was one of 17 people killed by a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, wrote about the game on Twitter: "I have seen and heard many horrific things over the past few months since my daughter was the victim of a school shooting and is now dead in real life. This game may be one of the worst."

Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was also murdered in the Parkland shooting, wrote in a statement on Facebook, "It's disgusting that Valve Corp. is trying to profit from the glamorization of tragedies affecting our schools across the country. Keeping our kids safe is a real issue affecting our communities and is in no way a 'game.'"

A Change.org petition was created to put pressure on Valve not to release it. More than 208,000 people have signed it, as of this writing.

The people spoke — and it worked. Valve will not be putting the game on their site.

The beauty of the age of social media is that people can speak up and accountability can be set into motion. Thanks to the Parkland parents and others drawing negative attention to the game, Valve decided not to put it on their site. They also released a statement explaining who was behind creating it.

“This developer and publisher is, in fact, a person calling himself Ata Berdiyev, who had previously been removed last fall," Valve's statement said:

"Ata is a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation. His subsequent return under new business names was a fact that came to light as we investigated the controversy around his upcoming title. We are not going to do business with people who act like this towards our customers or Valve."

Washington Post writer Alex Horton made an interesting observation about the game's trailer, which has since been removed from Steam's site: All of the "civilians" shown are women.

If a video game created by a Russian "troll" where you can play a school shooter and gun down women isn't a symbol for America 2018, I don't know what is.

We the people have power. Let's keep using it.

Having free speech and living in a free market system means that our voices and our actions can help determine the kinds of products that succeed and those that don't. When something that people find vile, cruel, or dangerous rears its head, we can use the collective power of our voices and purchasing power to pressure companies to shut it down.

Let's keep speaking up. It's working.

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