Study: Teen Gamers Read, Study Less

Teens who play video games spend less time doing homework, but they don't spend less time interacting with parents and friends than other teens.

That's what two university researchers found in a study that asked 1,491 teens ages 10 to 19 to keep diaries of time spent playing video games during the 2002-2003 school year. (It's published in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.) The teens recorded how much time they spent playing video games by themselves, and with family and friends, along with time spent reading, doing homework, in sports and doing active leisure activities.

Here's a brief look at what the University of Michigan's Hope M. Cummings and University of Texas at Austin's Elizabeth A. Vandewater found when they collected the diaries of one random weekday and one random weekend day from each of the teens in the survey:

• 36 percent of the teens (534) played video games, and 80 percent of them were boys, and 20 percent were girls. (Since the study took place nearly five years ago, I'm betting those numbers would be higher today.)

• Girl gamers played 44 minutes, on average, on weekdays and one hour and four minutes on weekends. For boys, the weekday average was 58 minutes and one hour, 37 minutes during weekend days.

• Teens who played video games spent 30 percent less time reading and 34 percent less time doing homework than teens who did not play video games.

• The more time kids spent playing games with parents, the more they spent time doing other activities with parents, too.

• Teens who played video games with friends were more likely to spend more time with friends doing other activities than kids who played video games alone.

The researchers said future research should look more closely at how video game play relates to how well kids do in school and in their social interactions.

We are always trying to strike the right balance in our house between video games, outdoor active play, and reading. Some days are better than others. I am more in favor of video games being played when my kids are playing them with friends, as long as they spend even more time playing outside and getting exercise, too.

How do you strike the video game/active fun/reading and homework balance in your homes?

LINK: Study Examines Video Game Play Among Adolescents [ScienceDaily.com]