Experts have suggested that modern TV shows are so exciting and fast paced that they make reading and schoolwork seem dull by comparison, and the same may be true for video games, the study notes.
It’s unclear from this study whether that’s the case, however, because Swing and his colleagues didn’t look at the specific games the kids were playing.
“We weren’t able to break [the games] down by educational versus non-educational or nonviolent versus violent,” says Swing, adding that the impact different types of games may have on attention is a ripe area for future research.
The study also suggests that young kids aren’t the only ones whose attention spans may be affected by video games.
In addition to surveying the elementary school kids, the researchers asked 210 college students about their TV and video-game use and how they felt it affected their attention. The students who logged more than two hours of TV and video games a day were about twice as likely to have attention problems, the researchers found.
These attention problems later in life may be the result of “something cumulative that builds up over a lifetime” or “something that happens early in life at some critical period and then stays with you,” Swing says. “Either way, there are implications that would lead us to want to reduce television and video games in childhood.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the leading professional organization for pediatricians and the publisher of Pediatrics, recommends that parents limit all “screen time” (including video and computer games) to less than two hours per day.
For his part, Green says that how much time kids spend playing video games should be a matter of common sense and parental judgment.
“A hard boundary, such as two hours, is completely arbitrary,” he says. “Children are individuals, and what makes sense for one won’t necessarily work for another.”
