Dear parents, please take note. When it comes to video gaming, girls in the 6-12 age group are at a heightened risk of developing less social competence than boys, warn researchers.
The researchers found that 10-year-old girls who playedgames frequently had less social competence than 12-year-olds than girls whoplayed less frequently.
The study by the Norwegian University of Science andTechnology (NTNU), NTNU Social Research, the University of California, Davis,and St. Olav’s Hospital in Norway, however, found that playing video games isgenerally not harmful to boys’ social development.
“Our study may mitigate some concerns about the adverseeffects of gaming on children’s development,” said Beate Wold Hygen,post-doctoral fellow at the NTNU and NTNU Social Research.
“It might not be gaming itself that warrants ourattention, but the reasons some children and adolescents spend a lot of theirspare time playing the games,” Hygen added in the paper published in thejournal Child Development.
The popularity of interactive video games has sparkedconcern among parents, educators and policymakers about how the games affectchildren and adolescents.
The new study, conducted in Norway, looked at how playingvideo games affects the social skills of 6- to 12-year-olds.
It found that playing the games affected youth differentlyby age and gender.
For the study, the researchers studied 873 Norwegian youthfrom a range of socioeconomic backgrounds every two years for six years whenthe children were aged 6 to 12.
The findings suggested that girls who spent more timeplaying video games at age 10 developed weaker social skills two years laterthan girls who spent less time playing games.
“Girls who play video games may be more isolatedsocially and have less opportunity to practice social skills with other girls,which may affect their later social competence,” the study noted.
Children who struggled socially at ages 8 and 10 were morelikely to spend more time playing video games at ages 10 and 12.
“It might be that poor social competence drives youth’stendency to play video games for extensive periods of time,” suggestedLars Wichstrom, professor of psychology at NTNU.