(2008-03-26) Computer Games Make Kids Social

Computer Game-s seem to make kids more social. In their first study, Ching and Wang observed children who chose to play a computer game during their free time. Though only one child could play at a time, the children negotiated turns and gave each other advice about how to play the game... "Though this is hardly the ideal setting for social interaction and higher-level thinking, the children exhibited a great deal of executive planning skills and complex social negotiations without any guidance or interference from adults," Ching said.

Note that they're playing in a social environment, and forced to share the computer. Still, I'd agree (based on Number One Son experience) that games can have a strong social component, even when played separately. In fact, parents get the argument "but if I don't get to play this game, I won't have anything to talk about with everyone else!".

Separately, I find that game playing makes him more emotionally brittle/annoying for hours afterward. Is that because he plays semi-violent games (I mean like World Of Warcraft, not Grand Theft Auto), or because those game fall into a generally-twitchy style, or because of the inherent nature of almost all Computer Game-s?

In the second study, children were given Digital Camera-s and told to create digital photo journals. The students displayed creativity and engaged in complex planning at every stage of the assignment, from how they framed their shots to how they chose to organize them to tell a story, Ching found.