Technology
Video Game Time Tied to Kids’ Mental, Social Health
In this Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013, file photo, Tracey Anderson, 26, re-stocks X-Box sets on opening day of a new Wal-Mart on Georgia Avenue Northwest in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
(GMA News) NEW YORK – The amount of time children spend playing video games is linked to small differences in their mental and social health, according to a new study.
Compared to children who didn’t play any video games at all, kids who played for no more than an hour a day scored better on mental and social health assessments—while kids who played for three or more hours per day scored worse.
But the new research also found that time spent on video games might only influence a sliver of a child’s overall behavior.
“It is probably more important knowing how much (game play) is happening than controlling how much is happening,” said Andrew Przybylski, an experimental psychologist and research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Internet Institute in the UK.
