Gaming addictions & others

[teigyr]

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. . . . This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one."

See...I think reading inspires creativity and imagination. Maybe it's just me but movies (or games) are never as good as what I see them as in my mind.

It drives me bonkers to see technology used in the place of interaction. I see people pushing strollers and walking dogs all the while talking on their cell phones. I'm not the parental sort but I'd think that time could be better spent bonding with the child? Or the dog?

Of course this is all coming from the person who would be upgrading to play Bejeweled. Nope...my style is more like Zork

[sfa]

Hmm. If I had seen the same thing I would have assumed the child was autistic and using an assistive communication device.

My seven year old still rides in a stroller when we're smart enough to remember it in advance. If we don't have it, we end up carrying him, and he's getting really heavy. To anyone who doesn't know him, he appears perfectly normal and I'm sure lots of judgmental people have assumed the worst about us, but I long ago stopped caring what other people think. But he can't/won't walk long distances--low muscle tone combined with no social awareness. The social awareness is one of those things people seem to think means that people with autism are awkward socially or don't talk, but in reality it's a lot more--it means, for example, that he won't know to keep his clothes on in public and will happily strip naked when he's hot or uncomfortable, because wearing clothes is a social construct as much as it is utilitarian. And it also means that if we're going someplace that he's not internally motivated to go to, you have to physically force him to move or else he'll just stop walking when he's no longer interested and will stand perfectly still or lie down in the middle of the sidewalk or parking lot or store aisle. A stroller is just easier.

And you know, you're probably right. Chances are this kid was perfectly normal and was playing a video game. But you don't know this and you don't know what the situation was or why you saw what you saw, and I think it's a bit silly to jump to conclusions when every single person on this board was in her youth a member of a generation that an older generation despaired over. And while chances are you saw a normal if somewhat lazy kid, chances also are that he'll grow up just fine and will do well enough in school and will get a good enough job and will be happy and well adjusted and will take his son to soccer lessons and his daughter to Girl Scouts (when they're not wasting time with whatever the 30-year-in-the-future version of Nintendo is) and will whine about filling out tax forms and will watch too much football on t.v. (or whatever the 30-year-in-the-future version of t.v. is) and will, generally speaking, turn out just fine, just like every other generation that an older generation has despaired over.

Sarah

[Tuckervill]

+1, Sarah.

I carried my middle child around until he was about 7. He was unusually small and I enjoyed carrying him. At the time, I thought he was my last child, so maybe it was more for me than for him!

One little slice of time doesn't tell us much about how parents are doing with their children. Heaven knows I'd be in trouble if I were judged and found lacking during that one tantrum in the grocery store!

Karen (it was me, not the kids)

[Eden]

......... and will, generally speaking, turn out just fine, just like every other generation that an older generation has despaired over.

Sarah

I think though that the current generation is not turning out fine.... the rate of obesity especially in children is higher than ever and for the first time adult diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure are showing up at alarming rates in children....

[Veronica]

I think we may be going to h@ll in a hand basket.

My comments are always based on what I see day in and day out in my classroom and school.

My class has little respect for others' property. Library books have their bar codes picked at and pulled off. Stickers on the desks to make grouping easier get picked off. Brand new books get nasty things written in them.

Things get left all over the place - very little actually gets put back where it goes.

Kids will saw at the desks with their scissors. These are 5th graders - 10 - 11 year olds.

They don't know how to be a community. This respect for the property of others isn't something I am accustomed to having to teach.

Then there is the disrepect to OTHER people...

Veronica

[Irulan]

I think though that the current generation is not turning out fine.... the rate of obesity especially in children is higher than ever and for the first time adult diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure are showing up at alarming rates in children....

Having two kids of the "current generation", I will disagree. Sure there are a lot of kids out there that the media focuses on: fat, dull, self centered and glued to their playstations, but there are a lot of really great kids out there that no one pays attention to.

My sons are 19 & 22.
Their peers are getting degrees in international relations with a minor in Arabic, philosophy, bioscience, engineering and other sciences. They have heated philosophical and political debates that go on until 4 in the morning. They don't do drugs. They volunteer in the community, from Scouts to Ski Patrol and the Food Bank. They are all pulling 3.+ at their respective high schools and universities. They are interested in politics, and were thrilled to be able to vote in the most recent election.

Sure they like to play WOW for hours on end at times. But I see what these kids are doing, and I have a lot of hope.

[Veronica]

Your kids aren't the current generation Irulan. Your kids are young adults. They are the kids I taught ten years ago- widely different from today's ten year olds.

Veronica

[shootingstar]

Unless we have had real classroom teaching experience of several hrs. per day per week for several years, where our primary role was teaching children under ages 18 or age of consent, it IS very presumptous for many of us to understand styles of children's learning and behavioural patterns while in a structured classroom setting with their peers.

I have several long-term friends who are teachers at the primary and high school level. And they have had their full-time careers for over last 15 years by teaching in several different schools.

My personal thoughts are:

*Some video games are better than others for creative problem solving, interaction, etc. (Let's not overjustify videogames.) Video games do not necessarily teach one to read or write, there are some games that do having these specific learning outcomes. But there is no requirement in video game design.

Reading, criticized as non-interactive and passive vs. videos: Of course reading appears to be non-interactive. BUT please remember that reading, particular reading of any materials with acceptable grammer and stylistic logic, develops a DIFFERENT set of skills: how to spell words correctly, seeing and undertanding grammar, syntax, organization of persuasive written style, understanding how different writing styles are adjusted to a person's reading comprehension level/type of audience.

Have we lost this very basic fact what reading a book/document means in terms of improving our reading and written fluency?

We cannot compare playing video games as the same thing as reading..or writing. The benefits are quite different.


By the way, I do agree that reading does require creative thinking, but in a totally different way. It allows....uninterupted time to reflect and absorb information or solve a problem. It allows a user to be non-linear...a reader can jump around in a book,...and go to the final chapter.

[Tuckervill]

We cannot compare playing video games as the same thing as reading..or writing. The benefits are quite different.

And of equal value.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

Karen

[Crankin]

I don't play video games because I don't have the eye hand coordination to do so. Of course, I don't play board games either, except maybe Trivial Pursuit. But, I think I can comment on "kids today" and the idea of books vs. video games.
I disagree with the fact that you are not getting any cognitive stimulation while reading. Yes, it is a solitary pastime, but there is plenty of research that shows how (kids and maybe adults) you develop more neural connections while reading. Please don't ask me to cite studies now, but I read a lot of this research about 10 years ago. I think about how much knowledge I gained from reading! Both of my kids, too. My husband, who is very smart, doesn't read much, except magazines and newspapers. Sometimes he has no clue what the rest of us are talking about.
I am not against video games, but I am against too much of anything. I let my kids play violent games on the computer... but I knew that I had to restrict the youngest one a bit because he has an obsessive personality with this stuff. But, again, he also read, played outside, and did a lot of creative stuff.
I found that most parents had no idea how to establish structure in their kid's lives. There were no expectations. I started teaching in 1976 and quit in 2007... there were always parents who had no clue and those were great. I guess it did get worse over the years, but that was why my last job was in a district that stressed social and emotional learning as much as academics. It was assumed that we had to teach this and our daily meetings and activities around this gave some of the kids their only way to learn appropriate social and emotional skills. And they all had to do community service. It was not easy and many teachers fought this, but I still think ALL kids benefited, even the ones from super families.
Irulan, your kids sound a lot like mine! Even my son who is in the military is extremely well read and has a wide variety of interests. But, this started when he was little, when most parents don't have a clue.

[salsabike]

If you read the whole article, you will see that the quote about reading was partially tongue in cheek. He was using it to make a point, and clearly did not mean it to be taken literally.

[Crankin]

I just saw a thing about this book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. She is a professor at Tufts Child Development Center. It discussed how reading improves the brain and compares it to the effects of technology on the brain.

[shootingstar]

If you read the whole article, you will see that the quote about reading was partially tongue in cheek. He was using it to make a point, and clearly did not mean it to be taken literally.

Salsa: I simply read your quote excerpt for the original text ....during my lunch hr. break. I didn't have time to click around and read the entire article. Do not take my comments above personally. You would have the best interests of children in mind since you have been a school counsellor.

[OakLeaf]

I just saw a thing about this book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf. She is a professor at Tufts Child Development Center. It discussed how reading improves the brain and compares it to the effects of technology on the brain.

I started that book in the fall and never got around to finishing it... I'll have to pick it up again as soon as I'm done with the novel I'm reading now.

Another fascinating book - less scientific I thought, but interesting nonetheless, and the author is a surgeon so not entirely lacking in scientific qualifications - was The Alphabet versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. He discusses how written language causes the brain to conform to literally linear, black-and-white thinking, and how the abstractions inherent in alphabetic writing take that to an even greater level.

This conversation reminds me a bit of the news stories a few years back about how the drug MDMA causes "brain damage." They didn't bother to mention that the brain changes brought about by that drug are identical to those caused by pharmaceutical anti-depressants.

The bottom line is that the brain is a dynamic organ, especially in childhood. Everything children do changes their brains; everything they do repetitively shapes the structure of how their brains will function in the future. I don't think it's possible to make value judgments beyond saying that a sedentary lifestyle is not good for anyone. As long as you're only spending a couple of hours a day alone in that darkened room, who's to say that a book is better than an online message board is better than a video game?


ETA: there's a great irony here, because of course computer programming, including video game programming, is about as linear and black-and-white as it gets. And yet most of today's game designers were yesterday's gamers.

[lph]

Oakleaf, love your sig

This is a fascinating discussion and I'm soaking it up. Will look for both those last books. I'll pipe up with my personal experience: I love reading, and I read a lot of fantasy and sci fi for relaxation. In addition to more challenging stuff. As a kid and teenager I could read for hours on end (academic family that approved greatly of reading) and could easily miss a nights sleep. Today I read a lot less, I need my sleep much more and just don't have the time. Besides, I'm used to being more active now so my body just plain protests against sitting still that long. I've tried playing video games, and have sat up until 2 am playing Myst. It was much of the same experience as reading fantasy books, getting lost in a different world, but the effects are much stronger and I can feel how easy it would be for me to get really, really addicted. I don't feel there's a big value difference between reading for fun and relaxation and playing similar video games for the same reason, but games are more addicting, especially if you have that type of personality. My son does, and I have to pry his latest book out of his fingers to get him to eat breakfast without spilling porridge everywhere.

There are many excellent books out there that can change or challenge your views, inspire you and teach you stuff you didn't know. I know there are some truly brilliant games out there too, but there's a lot of stuff, both books and games, and movies for that matter, that are mostly "just" entertainment. Entertainment and relaxation isn't a bad thing, it's just a problem if you have trouble fitting the meaningful and necessary things into your life as well, imo.

I encourage my son to play games with his friends when they're here, I try to discourage him from playing the same, repetitive games over and over he plays alone when he's bored.