Study Finds Boys Could Earn Two College Degrees In Time Spent Gaming

A study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior found that sixth-grader boys who went five days without exposure to technology were significantly better at reading human emotions than kids who had regular access to phones, televisions and computers.

Other research suggests that screen time can have an array of negative effects on kids, ranging from childhood obesity and irregular sleep patterns to social and/or behavioural issues, particularly for young boys.

The average young boy will spend 10,000 hours electronic gaming by the time he is 21 — more than twice the number of hours it takes the average college student to earn a degree.

The Open Source Computers in Human Behavior study, entitled “Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues” (Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.036) is coauthored by Patricia M. Greenfield, Yalda T. Uhls, Jordan Morris, Debra Garcia, and Gary W. Small of the departments of Psychology, Social Welfare, Education, and Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angele; Minas Michikyan of the Department of Psychology at California State University and The Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles; and Eleni Zgourou of the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, University of the Department of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The scientists note that for several millennia, humans’ primary method for social learning and communication has been face to face. However, in the 21st century, as mobile technology and the Internet became available to most of the world’s population (Internet world stats, 2013), digital media have become an increasingly prevalent factor in the informal learning environment (Greenfield, 2009).

They observe that children today, ages 8 to 18, spend over 7 1/2 hours a day, seven days a week using media outside of school (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Moreover, teenagers, ages 12 to 17, report using phones to text message in their daily lives more than any other form of communication, including face-to- face socializing (Lenhart, 2012). The extensive time that children and teenagers engage with media and communicate using screens may be taking time away from face-to-face communication and some in-person activities (Giedd, 2012). Indeed, they point to one longitudinal field experiment that examined whether increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction while eliminating the use of screen-based media and communication tools improved nonverbal emotion cue recognition in preteens.

The researchers conducted an experiment in which fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre-and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed.

Change scores for the two groups were compared using gender, ethnicity, media use, and age as covariates. After five days interacting face-to-face without the use of any screen-based media, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues improved significantly in reading facial emotion, compared to those in the control group, who experienced their normal media exposure during an equivalent five-day period over those of the control group for both facial expressions and videotaped scenes. Implications are that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for social interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication tools, improves a preteen’s understanding of nonverbal emotional cues.

The scientists acknowledge that in today’s world, digital media use begins at a very early age (Common Sense Media, 2013) and takes up a large proportion of the informal learning environment (Greenfield, 2009), making it essential to assess the effects of the substantial amount of time children engage with media. HOwever, they observe that this study provides evidence that, in five days of being limited to in-person interaction without access to any screen-based or media device for communication, preteens improved on measures of nonverbal emotion understand- ing, significantly more than a control group…. In other words, time the participants spent engaging with other children and adults face-to-face seemed to make an important difference. The absence of screens meant children could rely only on face-to-face interaction when communicating during camp activities. Accordingly, the results suggest that digital screen time, even when used for social interaction, could reduce time spent developing skills in reading nonverbal cues of human emotion.

The coauthors conclude that results of this study should introduce a much-needed societal conversation about the costs and benefits of the enormous amount of time children spend with screens, both inside and out- side the classroom. Given that a pre-requisite for effective socialization is learning and practicing how to communicate with others in person (Eder & Nenga, 2003), they maintain that face-to-face experiences must be emphasized in the socialization process. And while digital media provide many useful ways to communicate and learn, they say their study suggests that skills in reading human emotion may be diminished when children’s face-to-face interaction is displaced by technologically mediated communication, observing that today, even children under two years of age use mobile devices (Common Sense Media, 2013). Moreover, computers and mobile tablets are rapidly entering classrooms and being put in the hands of every child beginning as early as kindergarten (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009; Rotella, 2013) without sufficient attention to the potential human costs (Cuban, 2001). The scientists say they hope that this study will be a call to action for research that thoroughly and systematically examines the effects of digital media on children’s social development.

Another illustration of the need to to raise awareness on the need for kids to unplug is this infographic from MyJobChart.com about hours young boys spend gaming, and what other, more productive, things they could be doing with their free time, illustrates that the average young boy in our 21st Century society will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the time he is 21. For some contextual perspective, it takes the average college student 4,800 hours to earn a degree.

Infographic Credit MyJobChart

For more information about MyJobChart iinfographics visit:
http://myjobchart.com/

Sources:
Computers in Human Behavior
MyJobChart
Asylum Public Relations