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Potential Risks of Videogame Addiction

Also as a follow-up to our conversation on Monday. Although more women are in STEM careers, there is still a lag in those considered "hard sciences." Most people look at mathematics as the core difference, these authors look at creativity. "For instance, three factors that are widely accepted as being positively correlated with creativity are playfulness, curiosity, and willingness to take risks. Studies have found that boys and men are generally more playful than girls and women, and are more curious and more willing to take risks, which could help explain why men are more creatively productive than women in general, and in particular, in the hard sciences."

"Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, of course," he said. "But they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated - curious, persistent, and willing to take risks - will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own - a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear."

a new study identifies risk factors for "pathological," or obsessive, gamers and says that such children become more depressed and anxious the more they play.

diabetes patients to serve as mentors for those at high risk of diabetes

"the reason why I make toys like this is because I think if there's one difference I could possibly make in the world, that I would choose to make, it's that I would like to somehow give people just a little bit better calibration on long-term thinking. Because I think most of the problems that our world is facing right now is the result of short-term thinking, and the fact that it is so hard for us to think 50, 100, or 1,000 years out. And I think by giving kids toys like this and letting them replay dynamics, very long-term dynamics over the short term, and getting some sense of what we're doing now, what it's going to be like in 100 years, I think probably is the most effective thing I can be doing to help the world. And so that's why I think, personally, that toys can change the world." - Will Wright

Thank you for sharing this! I completely agree...I think besides short-term thinking, another dangerous tendency is severe risk-aversion...

Australia has been aggressively pursuing technology in education for a decade. I taught in Armidale, a large country town with a major university. It serves as an ideal location to work out the bugs because it is large enough to gather good research but small and contained enough to minimize complications.

What are the benefits and risks to teen online participation? Dr. Boyd immerses herself in youth communities and researches issues of race, gender, social networking, activism and more.

an interesting point from the article: "adolescents aren't reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards-or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do."

I really enjoyed this article, thank you. I find it very interesting to explore from a neurological perspective how some aspects of our modern world impact children and teens. So often parents say that the world is different today, but it is important to realize that the way we function does not change so quickly.

I noticed this article as well - I think it's absolutely fascinating! Now I'm curious about the implications of these findings for designing educational technologies for adolescents: how can products take advantage of these proclivities? A more difficult question would be - is there any way that technologies can counteract these tendencies in order to bring more balance/rationality into a teenager's world?

One point not covered in the article is that there may be something inherently similar about "gamers" (such as a motivational, attentional, or perceptive profile) that makes them different types of learners than others. Yes, it's true that some people deeply enjoy the structured (some more/some less) challenges provided by games, both board and virtual...but others do not. The big question is, does it benefit a majority of learners (or, say, a majority of at-risk learners) to invest in curricula that leverages game-based-learning?

It may stray a bit from the topic of motivation, but here's a neuroscience article (that I found quite interesting) that discusses how a difference in striatal volume appears to affect how one's performance improves in playing a game: Erickson, K. I., Boot, W. R., Basak, C., Neider, M. B., Prakash, R. S., Voss, M. W., Graybiel, A. M., et al. (2010). Striatal volume predicts level of video game skill acquisition. Cerebral Cortex, 20(11), 1-9. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp293

study cites a 50% increase in bad behavior based on internet games -- would be nice to know research design