Study "Strongly" Links Gaming With Kids' Poor Attention Spans
- Thread starter John Funk
- Start date
And just how does is this supposed link causal?
I could harp on about how the number of pubs rises with the number of churches in a city, but that doesn't mean that building churches causes the pubs to be built!
How we know that gaming doesn't just simply attract people who already have short attention spans, and not that it causes them?
I could harp on about how the number of pubs rises with the number of churches in a city, but that doesn't mean that building churches causes the pubs to be built!
How we know that gaming doesn't just simply attract people who already have short attention spans, and not that it causes them?
300lb. Samoan said:
I think the intent is obvious otherwise there wouldn't be much point to the article.
I think they might have it slightly backwards, but on the whole I agree with their findings, except that I don't think this is excursive to children, or that it directly causes conditions like ADHD.
I think young children, especially those with ADHD, will be more attracted to modern games, but as the article says it's not the games which cause the ADHD directly.
I've been a gamer for about 25 years, and despite being a really good student and never having any problems at school or with any kind of hyperactivity beyond the norm, but when I was at school games weren't nearly as good or immersive at they are nowadays.
However I have to admit that in the past 3 years, I've noticed my attention span decreasing, in direct relation with my increased gaming.
3 years ago I got a 360 and a gaming quality PC, and as the quality and complexity of the virtual worlds I could participate in increased, my tolerance or attention span for traditional, non interactive media such as music, films and TV programs has decreased greatly... I find it harder to concentrate on something that I'm not directly interacting with in some way, and I think that as the standards of games and virtual worlds approaches movie like visual and story quality, some people's attention span for traditional media may decrease, since it obviously won't be as interesting.
However, I'll also admit that there have been other mitigating factors in my life which have affected my brain chemistry, so I can't lay the responsibility for my decreased attention span completely on games, but due to these other factors games may always seem like the most attractive way to spend my time, and my favourite form of escapism.
I think young children, especially those with ADHD, will be more attracted to modern games, but as the article says it's not the games which cause the ADHD directly.
I've been a gamer for about 25 years, and despite being a really good student and never having any problems at school or with any kind of hyperactivity beyond the norm, but when I was at school games weren't nearly as good or immersive at they are nowadays.
However I have to admit that in the past 3 years, I've noticed my attention span decreasing, in direct relation with my increased gaming.
3 years ago I got a 360 and a gaming quality PC, and as the quality and complexity of the virtual worlds I could participate in increased, my tolerance or attention span for traditional, non interactive media such as music, films and TV programs has decreased greatly... I find it harder to concentrate on something that I'm not directly interacting with in some way, and I think that as the standards of games and virtual worlds approaches movie like visual and story quality, some people's attention span for traditional media may decrease, since it obviously won't be as interesting.
However, I'll also admit that there have been other mitigating factors in my life which have affected my brain chemistry, so I can't lay the responsibility for my decreased attention span completely on games, but due to these other factors games may always seem like the most attractive way to spend my time, and my favourite form of escapism.
I think I can safely say I would fall outside the norms of this test. I've been watching TV cartoons since I can remember (X-Men and Batman for the win etcetera), gaming consistently since about 8, and yet I have the ability to concentrate to an almost worrying level, often forgoing eating and sleeping when I really get stuck into something, and according to my parents TV and gaming didn't diminish this ability, if anything they unlocked it and gave me greater ability to focus, given how my education developed in relation to my watching and gaming (one of my parents is a child psychologist, she finds me fascinating)
So yeah, correlation not causation. Also, on a related note, the same was said about the advent of rock and roll, television, film, and way back when it was said of theatre, plays, poetry readings and musical evenings. Basically whatever is new and exciting will corrupt the young children as far as the adults are concerned, but since we seem to have been going from strength to strength for two hundred years since the first reported cases of new media affecting youngsters (The Romantics, for anyone who's interested, were pretty much directly accused of having let their attraction to poetry and the world of imagination distract them from the physical realities of their life) so I think I can safely say that even if there is a link, it won't do us any harm.
For a little more extrapolation on the Romantics, basically the old guard royalists and French conservatives accused the English of bringing over their ideas of freedom, propogated through the new medium of poetry, and said that it was distracted the next generation of French youth from their vital task of upholding the old ways. That's as far back as my personal knowledge goes (about 1789) but I think it's hilarious to see that by simply changing the wording from 'gaming' to 'poetry' and you have a two hundred and ten year old argument being repeated utterly without irony. I thought 'science' had grown out of this phase.
So yeah, correlation not causation. Also, on a related note, the same was said about the advent of rock and roll, television, film, and way back when it was said of theatre, plays, poetry readings and musical evenings. Basically whatever is new and exciting will corrupt the young children as far as the adults are concerned, but since we seem to have been going from strength to strength for two hundred years since the first reported cases of new media affecting youngsters (The Romantics, for anyone who's interested, were pretty much directly accused of having let their attraction to poetry and the world of imagination distract them from the physical realities of their life) so I think I can safely say that even if there is a link, it won't do us any harm.
For a little more extrapolation on the Romantics, basically the old guard royalists and French conservatives accused the English of bringing over their ideas of freedom, propogated through the new medium of poetry, and said that it was distracted the next generation of French youth from their vital task of upholding the old ways. That's as far back as my personal knowledge goes (about 1789) but I think it's hilarious to see that by simply changing the wording from 'gaming' to 'poetry' and you have a two hundred and ten year old argument being repeated utterly without irony. I thought 'science' had grown out of this phase.
hahaha...thenumberthirteen said:
Why wasn't I involved in this study? I played waaaay too many games since I got my first Spectrum 48k and have basically spent a large portion of my time since then playing computer games on whatever system I happen to have at the time..
My ability to concentrate? Pretty good. I'm a programmer (not games unfortunatly) and I spend sometimes up to 12 hours a day focusing on a single task or problem. I've got a wife and two kids. And a cat. Concentrating is not an issue.
So lessee... I appear to have about 50 games on Steam.. I've built a MAME cabinet (sadly, I blew the monitor up!).
My son who is 5 has his own DS now which he loves to bits. My mrs keeps telling me that he plays on it too much but I honestly dont think he does. We go fishing. He plays with lego and builds incredibly intricate structures with it. He's very bright and quite happy.
I dont particulary understand this study. Kids need stuff to focus on - and games are as good as anything else in my opinion. Also games give kids something that they really dont have in normal life: Control. Every minute of every day there is an adult telling them what they should and shouldn't be doing. So what's the problem with letting them play computer games? If you dont do that they'll probably go off outside and start pulling the wings off flies or something (I remember doing that before I got my first computer). That might make me a weirdo, I dunno. Not killed anything but sprites or polygons since then though!
Anyway, studies like this are all bollox becase no-one seems to take into account that kids get obsessed with bloody well anything - be it football or Transformers or lego or Thomas the Tank engine or whatever..
My son could use a mouse before he could read. He can solve most of the puzzles in the games I let him play (yeah, I monitor what he plays - Mario is good, Left 4 dead is not). He's learning physical control, fast reaction times, problem solving and a lot more. He's also having a lot of fun (except when Bowser kicks his arse several times in a row and he gets cross at his DS.. Just like I get when I get raped by hunter after hunter after hunter and my teammates are looking at the potted plants instead..)
TV makes you stupid. Heavy Metal makes you dangerous. Games kill your focus. Coffee gives you cancer. Sugar rots your teeth. Really? Then I'm fucking unique because I do ALL of those things - lots - and always have - and well.. I've had the patience to write all this crap.. And every other poster here has read the article and thought about it and replied in this thread. Surely that proves something? No? Oh well..
Just hit me that saying that the article is crap on a gaming website forum is a bit dense
edit edit edit edit - I just reread the original article. It appears that I didn't read it thoroughly the first time. So, perhaps my attention span is a little short after all? Guess it could be due to
where'd i leave that bottle opener?
Im dont completley disagree with the study, it makes a good point, gaming, t.v etc. are distractions.
But the distraction iself is not the problem is the person being distracted, I play videogames and watch t.v and my scores were more than decent this year.
So maybe parents shouldnt focus theyre parental anger at the media itself (like they do most of the time) but instead try to teach theyre kid not only control but also to have a right timing for doing things:
"Son, you can rot your brain for 3 hours AFTER you`ve done your homework and studied for your test"
But the distraction iself is not the problem is the person being distracted, I play videogames and watch t.v and my scores were more than decent this year.
So maybe parents shouldnt focus theyre parental anger at the media itself (like they do most of the time) but instead try to teach theyre kid not only control but also to have a right timing for doing things:
"Son, you can rot your brain for 3 hours AFTER you`ve done your homework and studied for your test"
And they explicitly say that they found a correlation, not necessarily causation. This means that children with ADD may be more attracted to games.Jamash said:
I gave a look at the paper and it seemed good. They researched the related work and designed a reasonable experiment. The conclusions only say that videogame use seems to have the same correlation to attention problems as TV watching. It's quite reasonable, really.
If you were born with a gameboy in your hands right out of your mother's uterus and find it easy to concentrate, good for you! But a scientific study won't usually be concerned with individuals, but with trends and distributions.
(Incidentally, I have been playing videogames since an early age and I have no trouble concentrating when I start a task; I have noticed though that today I have more trouble to start a given task, but the internet is much more to blame in this than games).
If you were born with a gameboy in your hands right out of your mother's uterus and find it easy to concentrate, good for you! But a scientific study won't usually be concerned with individuals, but with trends and distributions.
(Incidentally, I have been playing videogames since an early age and I have no trouble concentrating when I start a task; I have noticed though that today I have more trouble to start a given task, but the internet is much more to blame in this than games).
It's dangerous to draw any conclusions about this. You need to correlate a lot of other studies' findings with these to even begin to get a picture, and even then it's difficult to come to any conclusions about causality.
The fact is ADHD, Autism, and many other intellectual handicaps are all on the rise, even amongst children not exposed to television or video games. It seems obvious that those with low attention spans would be drawn to quick entertainment. I suppose it's also possible that there is some conditioning involved in which people come to expect their entertainment to be instant, and reject it when it is not.
The same thing can be said in other areas, though. Where I work, more and more electronic systems are being put into place to make services to our internal clients quicker and quicker. The quicker many of these become, the more expectation our clients have that everything can, does, and should work that way, and the less patient and grumpier they are becoming for having to ever wait. These are middle aged people I'm talking about. And don't take my word for it: go to Starbucks and count the minutes before some forty-five-year-old jerk starts griping about how "slow" they are.
It probably goes without saying that people used to getting what they want quickly, pay less attention and are less interested when they don't, and that if they have a pre-existing condition toward that, it is only exacerbated by being so enabled. That seems to be as true for "normal" non-gamer adults as it is for gamer kids with ADHD.
My litmus test for causality has been and remains Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. I spent my entire youth with my pals watching anvils get dropped on heads. Not a one of us has yet to attempt to stop somebody from driving through a painted-on tunnel with a dropped anvil. There are still greater factors than TV and video games, for how a kid turns out. Parenting and genes still rule this roost.
The fact is ADHD, Autism, and many other intellectual handicaps are all on the rise, even amongst children not exposed to television or video games. It seems obvious that those with low attention spans would be drawn to quick entertainment. I suppose it's also possible that there is some conditioning involved in which people come to expect their entertainment to be instant, and reject it when it is not.
The same thing can be said in other areas, though. Where I work, more and more electronic systems are being put into place to make services to our internal clients quicker and quicker. The quicker many of these become, the more expectation our clients have that everything can, does, and should work that way, and the less patient and grumpier they are becoming for having to ever wait. These are middle aged people I'm talking about. And don't take my word for it: go to Starbucks and count the minutes before some forty-five-year-old jerk starts griping about how "slow" they are.
It probably goes without saying that people used to getting what they want quickly, pay less attention and are less interested when they don't, and that if they have a pre-existing condition toward that, it is only exacerbated by being so enabled. That seems to be as true for "normal" non-gamer adults as it is for gamer kids with ADHD.
My litmus test for causality has been and remains Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. I spent my entire youth with my pals watching anvils get dropped on heads. Not a one of us has yet to attempt to stop somebody from driving through a painted-on tunnel with a dropped anvil. There are still greater factors than TV and video games, for how a kid turns out. Parenting and genes still rule this roost.
Unfortunately there is a nasty trend in medicine of trying to define a "normal" that is often unreasonable. A good example is statins and cholesterol level; the "normal" is defined as the average cholesterol levels of healthy 25 year olds. But it is almost impossible for even the healthiest 50 year olds to have as good cholesterol levels as an average 25 year old, so has lead to the paradoxical situation where statins are being prescribe JUST because they are over a certain age.HG131 said:
But is it the cholesterol levels that are ACTUALLY the problem or just an indicator of a problem like clogged coronary arteries?
ADHD is in danger of making a disease out of the human condition. I don't think it's a drug company conspiracy, it's jsut no scientist ever got recognition for pointing out aspects of the human condition, they got accolades for "discovering" new diseases. The temptation to push the definition of disease or debilitating condition must be unbearable.
And the Pharmaceuticals, well they are hardly going to object to new disease definitions, especially if they can be treated by patentable drugs. No need for conspiracy, just live and let live.
I am in no position to discredit experts but I am genuinely sceptical of how much ADHD is actually a "disorder" and how much just part of normal human variation.
