We spoke to Year 6 pupils at Uphall Primary School in Ilford, Essex, and collated the views of children who participated in the Byron Report on Safer Children in a Digital World for this article.
Playing computer video games has a bag-load of benefits, say the 260 eight to 15-year olds who took part in the Byron review, Safer Children in a Digital World.
The general consensus (also agreeable with the views of the parents and experts involved) is that playing computer games can be educational and relaxing. They can help improve hand-eye coordination, concentration and memory skills. They have the potential to improve maths and reading skills, too. Games that require multiple players can help exercise team-building and cooperation skills. Older children cite social benefits from meeting friends while playing online games and having friends round to play games. Deaf children found them easier than having to keep up with the subtitles on television.
On the other hand, the Byron report kids say playing video games could lead to problems such as increased violence, health issues, and becoming addicted to games…
Uphall Primary School pupil Solomon*, age 11, thinks he is addicted. It began at age five with his GameBoy, which he often played under the covers when his dad thought he was asleep. These days his tactics for avoiding capture when playing his PlayStation are no less sophisticated.
As he says, ‘When my dad comes in I quickly switch it off and pretend I am sleeping. I do think I play it too much because I feel some part of my body trying to stop me; but I fight back. Sometimes when I go to sleep my eyes feel funny.’
A 15-year-old girl, who contributed to the Byron review, said: ‘My little brother, you cannot take his Nintendo DS from his hands a lot of the time, he will find it difficult to go to sleep because he’s away from it.’
And Solomon’s friend Salim says: ‘I realise that when I play a lot my eyes sting; I played everyday during the holidays but stopped for the last two days and my eyes calmed down, and since then I play it less. So I advise people not to play a lot because you get headache and eye ache and you can die from playing a lot.’
As sad (and far fetched) as some of these comments sound, what it does tell us is that children often know when they are over-doing it. This gives parents a good starting point for a serious conversation.
The crux of the issue, and that which prompted the Byron report in the first place, is children’s wellbeing and safety, particularly with regard to health.
Mark Johnson, professor of psychology at Birbeck University in London, says: ‘Negative effects may include a lack of physical exercise (carrying general health risks) and a lack of expertise in fine motor skills relevant for whole body action (such as in sports).’
It is clear that while children do enjoy playing games they, too, are concerned about their heath. When asked whether they thought they played their games console too much most of the pupils at Uphall put their hands up.
‘People, not consoles, are your children’s best friends,’ say XBox. Their advice is to ‘manage and monitor your child’s time’ and to ‘find a balance between the time spend playing games and other fun family activities’.
This is where rules might work. Hassan said that in his house the rule is: ‘You can only play half an hour every day, you can only play one game and that you have to give it to the next person’, which he promises he sticks to.
Most of the children participating in the Byron report said their parents largely trusted them to make sensible decisions about the amount of time spent in front of the screen. Restrictions on the amount of time spent playing were often therefore self-imposed, as they ‘needed to do their homework’.
We found this true of most of the children we spoke to at Uphall who insisted they had their own sense of what was good for them. The children said things such as:
‘My mum and dad never set up rules because I never play more than about 15 minutes. I only use the console as a break from work.’
‘I play when I have nothing to do but when I am doing something I don’t.’
‘I only play on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.’
*Children’s real names have not been used in this article.
