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Don't worry about how violent video games are - it's the amount of TIME spent playing them that's damaging, experts claim

University of Oxford experts examined types of games played

Discovered poor behaviour is linked to a lengthy daily video game habit

Children who played daily for more than 3 hours are more likely to fight

But violent of content of games didn't affect the children's behaviour

Video games have been blamed for violent crime and 'moral immaturity', but it is the amount of time spent playing rather than the game's content that is damaging, experts have claimed

Researchers found that children who played video games for more than three hours a day were more likely to be hyperactive, involved in fights and be disinterested in school.

However, scientists could find no link between playing violent games and real-life aggression or poor academic performance.

The study, carried out by the University of Oxford, examined the effects of different types of games and time spent playing, on children's social and academic behaviour.

They found that the time spent playing games could be linked with problem behaviour and this was the significant factor rather than the types of games played.

They also found that low levels of play - defined as being less than an hour a day - might actually benefit behaviour, according to the study, published in the journal, Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

Lead author Dr Andy Przybylski, from the university's Oxford Internet Institute, said: 'We can see links between some types of games and children's behaviour, as well as time spent playing.

'However, we cannot say that game play causes good or bad behaviour. We also know that the risks attached to game-playing are small.

'A range of other factors in a child's life will influence their behaviour more as this research suggests that playing electronic games may be a statistically significant but minor factor in how children progress academically or in their emotional wellbeing.'

Parents might assume that strategy and puzzle games may give their child an edge in the classroom, but the experts found that the sociability and grades of children who played these 'wholesome' games were no higher than those of their non-playing peers.

The study found that no game features typically encountered by children could be linked to negative behaviour, but there were some behavioural benefits.

For example, children who played video games with a cooperative and competitive element had significantly fewer emotional problems or problems with peers.

Children who chose to play solitary games were found to do well academically and displayed fewer emotional problems. They were also unlikely to be involved in fights.

The researchers relied on teachers' assessments of behaviour of individual pupils at a school in the southeast of England.

Teachers reported whether the 200 pupils in the study group were helpful, or whether they were rowdy and likely to fight - as well as commenting on their academic performance.

The pupils involved in the study were numbered so their personal identities were not revealed to the researchers.

The assessments were matched with the responses to a questionnaire that asked each of the 12 and 13-year-old pupils in the study how long they played games each day and the type of games they preferred.

The choice given was to play solo, offline competitive team games, online cooperative and competitive games, combat and violence, puzzles and strategy, and games to do with sport and racing.

The results of the study seem to bolster recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, that parents should keep an eye on how much time their children are spending playing video games.

Co-author Allison Mishkin said: 'These results highlight that playing video games may just be another style of play that children engage with in the digital age, with the benefits felt from the act of playing rather than the medium itself being the significant factor.'

HEAD TEACHERS TO REPORT PARENTS TO POLICE IF THEY LET THEIR CHILDREN PLAY VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

Parents are in danger of being reported to police by their children's head teachers if they allow them to play video games for over 18s.

A letter sent by a group of schools in Cheshire raised concerns about the 'levels of violence and sexual content' young people are being exposed to by playing games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, which are renowned for their violent characters and have an 18 classification.

It warns that if teachers are made aware their pupils have been playing these video games they will contact police and social services.

The letter, sent by Nantwich Education Partnership, said allowing children to play these type of games on Xboxes and Playstations is deemed 'neglectful'.

It comes amid fears children could be left more vulnerable to grooming and abuse by being exposed to early sexualised behaviour as well as extreme brutality, often seen in video games in the upper age classifications.

The letter says: 'Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Dogs of War and other similar games, are all inappropriate for children and they should not have access to them.

'Nor should they have Facebook accounts or interact on sites or media or messaging sites like WhatsApp that are not designed for their age.'

Nantwich Education Partnership covers 16 primary and secondary schools in Cheshire.

The letter also warns: 'If your child is allowed to have inappropriate access to any game or associated product that is designated 18+ we are advised to contact the Police and Children's Social Care as it is neglectful.'

Video games with an 18 classification are known for their violence.

Call of Duty allows players to take on the role of a blood thirsty soldier in a number of violent scenarios - arming themselves with an arsenal of weapons including rifles, pistols and grenades.

The game has been mired in controversy, with Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik claiming he had trained himself to kill his 77 victims through playing the game.

Grand Theft Auto is well known for its violence which includes carjacking, gambling, killing and simulated sex with prostitutes. Last year Grand Theft Auto V was removed from the shelves of Australian stores Target and Kmart amid fears that the game glamorises violence against women.

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Forget violence, it's TIME spent playing video games that's damaging

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University of Oxford experts examined types of games played Discovered poor behaviour is linked to a lengthy daily video game habit Children who played daily for more than 3 hours are more likely to fight But violent of content of games didn't affect the children's behaviour Video games have been

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Researchers at the University of London found that children who watched three or more hours a day were three months ahead of their peers who watched less than an hour a day, contradicting received wisdom that blames TV for diminishing youngsters' brain power.

The study also found that rules imposed by parents hoping to boost their children's academic ability, such as insisting on regular meal or bed times, make only a relatively small difference.

The report's lead author Dr Alice Sullivan, senior academic at the university's Institute of Education, said the educational value of children's television had been "underestimated", adding: "It may also help expose some children to a broader vocabulary than they get at home."

In tests comparing youngsters of the same social class, regular meal times only gave a six-week advantage in terms of reading and writing skills, while set bedtimes gave only a two-month head start.

The analysis concluded that "social class and in particular parents' education were the dominant factors" in determining how well children fared academically.

The found that children with parents in steady, well-paid jobs were more than a year ahead than those whose parents work in unskilled or semi-skilled positions, the Daily Mail reported.

The study, published in the journal Sociology, used test results for 11,000 British seven-year-olds tracked since birth as part of a long-term project called the Millennium Cohort Study.

The results were part of an analysis examining claims made by politicians that parenting skills were more important than social background in determining how well children do at school and in later life.

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Letting children watch hours of TV improves academic ability, study claims

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Researchers at the University of London found that children who watched three or more hours a day were three months ahead of their peers who watched less than an hour a day, contradicting received wisdom that blames TV for diminishing youngsters' brain power.

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Jennifer Egan's epoch-defining novel A Visit from the Goon Squad ends with a vision of our near future: by the 2020s toddlers have become the music industry's most influential consumer group, known as "pointers" for the ease with which they download tracks via touch screens. One critic told me she found this final chapter "implausible". She wouldn't have said that, I replied, had she had a toddler in her house.

It's commonplace now to see tots who can't talk, but can navigate an iPhone with ease, or infants who scowl when they touch a computer screen that doesn't respond with the immediate elasticity of an iPad. These fledgling hi-tech junkies are, of course, reflections of their Wi-Fi-zombie mums and dads. I can't be the only parent who has, on occasion, conducted an entire conversation with a child without once tearing my eyes away from a screen - leading my younger son to shout, "You're not looking at me, Mummy!"

Granted, I work from home and my laptop is the tool of my trade, but I can't avoid the guilty realisation that my computer can seem, at times, even more compelling than my offspring - or, at least, less demanding. I am equally aware that the TV sometimes makes a convenient au pair. It's small wonder a psychologist, Aric Sigman, this week warned of the perils of "passive parenting" and "benign neglect" caused by our reliance on gadgets. Indeed, Sigman's presentation to members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health outlined the parallels between screen dependency and alcohol and drug addiction: the instant stimulation provided by all those flickering graphics leads to the release of dopamine, a chemical that's central to the brain's reward system.

Not that you need to be a research scientist to realise how addictive the virtual world can be. When I'm bidding for junk on eBay, all semblance of sanity flies out of the window; my hands sweat, my heartbeat surges and I truly feel like I've "won" that item, even though I've just parted with £200 and I don't need a rocking horse. So I'm with Sigman when he says screen dependency poses high risks to children's mental and physical health and their access to such gadgets should be restricted. Some have attacked Sigman's views, saying there's not enough evidence to support his opinions. I imagine people said the same thing to the late farmer and environmentalist Elspeth Huxley when she suggested, decades before the outbreak of BSE, that no good would come of feeding cows with bone meal made from the reconstituted parts of dead cattle.

All around us we observe the behaviour-altering sway of new technology on adults, so it seems astounding that anyone wouldn't fret about its influence on developing brains. Walk past any bus stop and you will see grown people so disconnected from one another that they might as well be in Perspex boxes, as they angrily jab at tiny keypads or talk to the air. Go to a restaurant and you will see diners so addicted to their "CrackBerries" that every social nicety is ignored in pursuit of staying connected. I was on a plane last week where three people seated near me filmed the landing views on their smart phones, in preference to actually looking at them. An even madder sight was the suit in business class who was taking photos of himself on his iPad, before flicking through a collection of plane portraits.

It seems to me alcohol's hold on society is as nothing to the manic grip of digital technology, and we're not handing booze out indiscriminately to our young. So aren't we right to fret when we see the hypnotised look that comes over our children's faces when they spend too long on the computer? My eight-year-old's glazed expression when he plays his favourite Bin Weevils (on his father's computer, supervised, twice weekly) is radically different from the lively cognitive whirrings glimpsed when he draws, or writes stories, or builds Lego cities. Only an idiot need be told there's a great difference between hewing out your own imaginative realm or, at the push of a button, entering a virtual world created for you. The latter is seductive in its easy accessibility, and corrupting for the same reason.

I'm not advocating prohibition: like most addictive pursuits, the online world has many upsides, and our children will be part of the digital revolution in a way that we're only just beginning to comprehend. I wouldn't want either of my sons to be isolated from their peers. But I do believe that Sigman is right when he calls for children's viewing time to be heavily restricted. Even adults should exercise restraint. Where's the evidence? Google boss Eric Schmidt told an audience of students at Boston University last Sunday that they should put down their gadgets for at least an hour every day: "Take your eyes off that screen and look into the eyes of the person you love. Have a conversation, a real conversation." And if he doesn't know what he's talking about, no one does.

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How technology is taking hold of our children's lives

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Jennifer Egan's epoch-defining novel A Visit from the Goon Squad ends with a vision of our near future: by the 2020s toddlers have become the music industry's most influential consumer group, known as "pointers" for the ease with which they download tracks via touch screens. One critic told me she found this final chapter "implausible".

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Technology Pros and Cons

Use of Technology- Impact on Children's Learning.

The social entertaining media in modern days have affected our life in grand scale, in a good and bad way, specially for children for whom it is becoming an unavoidable feature of their daily life and this surely can have good or bad impact on children.

Cons:
Nowadays, young people and children are spending most of their spare time in networking and social media such as, Facebook , twitter, Instagram , WhatsApp and gaming sites through which they get connected with other users.
In recent years, everything is different thanks to modernity. A mere 20 years ago according to Cris Rowan a Pediatric Occupational Therapist, children used to play outside all day, playing sports and building forts.
Everything in the past was different, children for example,created their own form to play that did not requires costly equipment or parental supervision. Children of the past moved a lot and their sensory World was nature based and simple.
And some people agree that family time in the past was often spent in a good different way, they had more time to talk to each other and make everything such as eat,clean home together and also talk about their day therefore, improving their family relationship.
In this modern era, children are moving with fast pace with the new technologies. They like to play more virtual games, play stations and socialize with their online friends or online community than go out and spend time with ''real people'' they doesn't even have much time to meet their friends daily. In this case networks are good because they allow young people to connect with each other in a short time.

A 2010 Kaiser Foundation study showed that children use an overage 7.5 hours per day of entertainment technology, 75 percent of these children have TV's in their bedrooms, and 50 percent of North American have the TV on all day.
Entertainment technology(TV, Internet, Videos games, Ipads, cell phones) has advanced so rapidly, that families have scarcely noticed the significant impact and changes to their family structure and lifestyles.
Most people agree that parents should keep a watchful eye on their children when they are using technologies.
Technology's impact on families today is fracturing its very foundation, and causing a disintegration of core values that long ago were the fabric that held families together. Parents now rely heavily on communication, information, and transportation technology to make their lives faster and more efficient.
Technology, however, can also be harmful to different ways on which children think. Moreover, this influence isn't just affecting children on the surface of their thinking, rather, because their brains are still developing and malleable, it wire the children's brain in a way very different than normal(Published by Jim Taylor).
The effects of technology on children are complicated, with both benefits and costs. If technology helps or hurts in the development of children's thinking depends on what specific technology is used and how and what frequency it is used.
Pros:
The good effect that technology can bring to children is that with their level of access to technology and a great ability to understand and utilize it, children can explore the Seven Wonders of the World, use an app to learn how to read, write and spell.(A 2012 Pew Internet Project Survey).
With Technology children can develop their minds rapidly and learn different things from different parts in the World and it can somehow help their progress in the school or as a person when they get old. They can also have a big access to information and communication.

Technology makes possible for children or old people communicate with other people in different part of the World, different country, city,even different continent, technology makes things easier for everyone who have access to it.
People in general, can share their feelings, ideas and opinions through the technology. Sometimes children can have opportunity to meet new people and take experience from them.
Technology is a process of goods and bad things depending on what the users use it. For children can be a good or bad school.
Everything has a limit, whether children use technology in a good way they will have the benefits from it, if they use it in a bad way they will reap the consequences from it.

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''Technology and children'' for the good and the bad

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The social entertaining media in modern days have affected our life in grand scale, in a good and bad way, specially for children for whom it is becoming an unavoidable feature of their daily life and this surely can have good or bad impact on children.

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Learning

Television can be a useful tool in teaching children about the world. Some television programs encourage viewers to visit the zoo, libraries, bookstores, museums and parks in order to increase their learning.PBS’ long time running program, Sesame Street has been teaching children important lessons about cooperation, kindness, numbers and the alphabet since 1969. This show has helped to improve children’s reading and learning skills. The Electric Company helped teach elementary school children grammar and reading skills when they were too old for Sesame Street. Some video games can help children to develop their fine motor skills and coordination. For students who are struggling with media there are programs available to help them understand it.

Prosocial Behaviours

Altruism is the first example of prosocial behaviour. Altruism is putting someone else’s needs above your own and helping them. Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood is an example of a show that models altruism when Mr. Rogers helped his puppet friends in the Land of Make Believe when they had a problem. Social interaction is an example of prosocial behaviour. When families watch television together they have more physical contact and could discuss the morals of the show they are watching. Repeated exposure to a show that models prosocial behaviour can have a lasting impact with children. A study where 3 to 5 year olds watched 15 minutes of either Sesame Street or Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in their preschool
showed that watching Mister Rogers increased the amount of social contact with other children in the classroom. It also showed an increase in children’s ability to praise and give affection to other classmates. Sesame Street also had a positive effect on children with low social skills. Acceptance of Others is another prosocial behaviour that can be developed through educational
programing that is diverse. Examples are Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer who portray people of different races and ethnic backgrounds. It has been shown that the preschoolers who regularly viewed Sesame Street had a more positive attitude towards people of different groups.

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Positive
Effects of the Media on Children’s Behaviour

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Positive
Effects of the Media on Children’s Behaviour

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Television

The negative effects of television are over exposure to violence, inappropriate sexuality
and offensive language. Research has shown that watching violent television shows can play a role in how violent our children behave. Every year, the amount of violence on television increases. An average child will witness about 12,000 acts of violence on television annually, including murder and rape. More than 1000 studies have concluded that heavy exposure to television violence leads to more aggressive behavior especially in boys. Missouri Western State University did a study in 2003 that looked at children between the ages of 5 to
12 and how they become more violent after watching a violent television program. The children’s behaviour was recorded first and then they were shown a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon. After watching the cartoon their behaviour was recorded again and it was found that they engaged in more violent behaviour. Television shows are becoming more sexualized in content and send the wrong message that it is okay to engage in these behaviours in the real world. During the 20 yearsbetween 1976 and 1996, there was a 270% increase in sexual interactions during the traditional; family viewing hour of 8pm to 9pm. These sexual
interactions are telling children that they are without risks, normal and ‘everyone does it.’ Rarely do televisions shows show the negative side of such behaviours such as sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Many advertisements for such things as
toys, fatty and sugary foods send the wrong message to children about their eating habits and what they want their parents to buy them. Commercials for healthy foods only account for 4% of the food advertisements shown during children’s programming. These values will influence their choices as they get older and become consumers themselves. These negative values established in childhood will influence them to buy unnecessary and unaffordable products as they get older. Teens can be influenced by alcohol advertising and the ‘cool’ image
portrayed. They rarely show the downside of abusing alcohol, such as addiction and health problems. Also, by watching too much television it can affect a child’s learning and performance in school. The average Canadian child will watch approximately fourteen hours of television each week. By the end of high school, they will have spent more time watching television than attending school. Due to these lengthy hours children are not using their time to engage in important activities such as, playing, reading, doing schoolwork, leaning to
talk, socializing, and developing other important skills. Too much television is also taking time away from exercising and outdoor activities causing them to be less physically fit. By watching television we are more prone to eat unhealthy food that is high in fat and sugar. Unhealthy eating practices shown by children’s favourite celebrities can contribute to eating disorders.

Music Videos

Music videos can influence children by their violent nature. More than half of the videos show violence against women and ¾ show sexually explicit materials. Many videos show women in unequal roles. Many music videos show stereotypes which can influence children’s attitudes towards other races and relationships. Music lyrics themselves have become worse over the years with their constant inappropriate language and references to violence, drugs and sex.

Video Games

Video games, like television, can be negative because they can promote inactivity, anti-social behaviour and violence if played excessively. A 2001 study showed that video games that were rated for all ages contained 64% intentional violence and 60% of the games provided rewards for injuring a character.

All of these media examples are leading to children being desensitized and their negative
emotional reactions to decline. This causes them to be unable to process what they are witnessing in a healthy manner.

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Negative
Effects of the Media on Children’s Behaviour

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Negative
Effects of the Media on Children’s Behaviour

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Media has been shown to have a major influence in our children’s behaviour and how they view the world around them. It is important that children are exposed to age-appropriate media,such as television, radio, music, video games and the internet.

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Effects
of the Media on Children’s Behaviour

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Effects
of the Media on Children’s Behaviour