Gaming addictions & others

[shootingstar]

Any chance this child was disabled in some way? We have a couple of different schools near my office for the disabled, lots of different wheelchairs/strollers etc.

It was not readily apparent to me as a pedestrian passing by the parent and kid in stroller. I know what you're asking since I did work at rehabilitation hospital for spinal cord injured adults for a few years ages ago. Beside our facility, was a pediatric rehabilitation hospital for children with various disabilties, cerebral palsy, MS, cystic fibrosis, etc. in addition to spinal cord diseases.

It appeared to me at glance, the child was at least normal in hand function and hand-eye neurolocomotor skills, because child's fingers were moving ...FAST.

I do have a pedestrian interest in this ....as a librarian. I am not a children's nor school librarian but have noticed in the professional literature for librarians, in past 2 years, a niche interest of some public librarians interested in gaming as learning strategy..for information literacy skills and secondly, as another resource to draw in more children and teenagers into the library. The reality is use statistics particularily among teenagers for using their public library, are dropping if the library director doesn't reinvent some of their services/diversify their range of resources. And use statistics affects how the library will be funded in the future.

I am not convinced when people talk about the real learning benefits of video games if those benefits can be applied to alot of video games. It would seem a video gaming software company should hire some staff who have specialized knowledge of adult and child cognitive development and learning.

By the way, the person I spoke with she has: her undergraduate university degree in Chemical Engineering. Then her visual arts degree from a public, well-known art and design college. Her first love is the latter which includes computer animation design. So she is someone equipped with strong analytical skills to write programming, etc. and visual design...but learning skills and cognitive development is probably she is picking up as she goes along if she is paying attention to this.

The companies don't care, as long as these games are truly fun...they are to make money.

There's nothing inherently wrong with some video game playing. Even if there is the occasional mildly violent video game, But for a child, it would seem for the child's long-term benefit, that they have passions/interests aside from video games and computers.