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may displace after-school activities that have educational value and may interfere with the development of reading and writing skills in some children

When you read a book, for example, you go on a journey. There is a sequence imposed on you by the author. There is a beginning, and something follows from that – you are introduced to the characters, you begin to empathise with them, and so on. You have to read the book in a certain sequence, rather like a sentence itself, and the journey actually takes you somewhere. Contrast this with a computer game in which a child must rescue a princess. There is no real empathy for the princess, only the buzz of the rescue itself and the process of the game. There is no long-term significance to the characters, because any consequences are reversible. Children don't learn from their mistakes at all. Why bother when you can just click restart?

Indeed, a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that only 4 percent of American adults spend time in virtual worlds.

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Use of virtual worlds is more common among teens than among adults. In September 2009 we measured virtual world usage among adults for the first time and found that 4% of online adults visit virtual worlds. Usage of virtual worlds is relatively consistent across age cohorts, with 4% of internet users under age 30 and 4% of those thirty and up visiting virtual worlds. Among adults there are no differences on virtual world use related to gender, race/ethnicity, income, or education.