Thanks to NPR, we now know that the image of your 17-year old son on the couch playing video games may a little be rosier than you first thought. Thanks to SCIENCE (I love science), it seems your son's late-night-binary-language attack raids over the Balkans may bear immediate fruit as he improves his ability to plan, anticipate, swiftly change tasks, drive in the fog, and, believe or not, pay better attention. What science is this you say? Read on...When our mom said, "Who has the power to turn off the TV?" She did not mean, "Who has the remote control," because the TV had no remote control. She meant, and we understood, "Who has the ability to overcome the grip the flickering box has on your brain, stand up, and go push the button to turn the TV off?"
At that point it became a battle of the wills between my brother and me. No matter who got up first, mom won. The question was only which one of us was going to be the instrument of her victory.
We grew up playing video games as the games themselves came of age: Intellivison, Atari 2600, Colecovision, NES, SEGA, etc. As I moved into college and beyond, games became significantly more realistic and, believe it or not, more gripping. Much to my peace-loving parents' chagrin, I have played my fair share of first-person shooter games. (Hey, someone has to dispatch those bad guys and protect civilization.) I never lost days in front of the screen like some of my college pals who would remorselessly announce, "My classes are canceled today due to DOOM," but I will admit to some late nights of online play with a single friend as snipers behind enemy lines. Adolescent and early adult comraderie increased as we faced those challenges and saw our fire teams decimated time and again by the enemy until finally, late in the evening (early in the morning) some one or two of us would survive and prevail. My children will want this too (who doesn't ;-) ). It was a blast.
So the next time you see that 17 year-old driving his handheld controller at breakneck speeds on the television, consider a deep breath rather than chastisement. However, remember too that all researchers suggest moderation and to pay attention the violent images that they are taking in.
