As a fan, a parent and a teacher I see both advantages and disadvantages to children playing video games. In comparison to time spent in front of the television, however, I feel that there are significantly more benefits to the time spent playing video games than the time many of us spent a generation ago watching mindless hours of television reruns.

Perhaps the biggest difference in my mind between time spent playing videogames versus times spent watching television is that watching television is a completely passive experience.

Television content is generated by writers and producers who are often a great deal cleverer than the people they are making programs for. The vast majority of viewers are happy to tune in and uncritically receive whatever content has been generated for them.

Video gamers, on the other hand, are active during their media interaction. Some games may require quick reflexes or some may require problem solving or analytical thinking skills. All video games, by their very nature, require players to use their powers of cognition at some level. In fact, many games are, in essence, a sort of competition between the player and the creators. Over time, the difference between spending leisure time in the active experience of video gaming over the passive experience of television watching is significant. Video gamers present as brighter, livelier and more interesting people than the average "couch potato."

Even better, many games are based on classic mythology or require the gamer to be able to read well in order to follow the central narrative. Embarrassingly, a number of fairly popular video games seem to have been produced by people with questionable literacy skills themselves. But in my opinion, the existence of and interest in these games just reinforces the importance of both the written word and the literary classics. No doubt, more than a few gamers have grown out of a video game and into a taste for Greek or Norse Mythology.

Another consideration for me as a parent is whether I would rather my children were out running around the neighborhood, or in the den playing video games. There is far less worry when they are in the house. Even better, they are still at an age when they rely on me and their stepmother a great deal in order to play. Helping the kids get started on a new game, get to the next level or even understand the rules of a video game has proven to provide many sensational bonding experiences.

Finally, a good many young people learn to live and breathe video game technology, setting themselves up to dominate as workers in the new economy. Ironically, the video gamers of today often absorb and acquire more knowledge independently than many of us thirty-somethings (and up) can expect to acquire during an entire degree program.

I am not arguing that every child need only play videogames to be successful. Indeed as a teacher, I believe that children who only play video games, as opposed to cultivating other interests, develop many other difficulties. Rather, I believe that children today are better off playing videogames than they would be watching television, so long as they participate in other activities as well.

Learn more about this author, Russell Dawson.
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