Excessive Video Game Playtime Can Affect Kids’ Behavior, Study Finds
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iStock/Thinkstock(OXFORD, England) — Don’t worry so much about your children playing violent video games. Worry more about the time they actually spend with their games and controllers.
That’s the takeaway from a new study that actually found no definitive link between the types of games youngsters player and outward aggression and bad study habits.
However, University of Oxford researchers led by study author Dr. Andy Przybylski say that children who spend three or more hours daily playing video games tend to be hyperactive, do worse in school and are more apt to pick fights than their peers.
They based their findings on teacher evaluations of 200 students ages 12 and 13, matched with surveys the same youngsters filled out about their video game habits.
The Oxford study appears to corroborate a previous recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics that parents should monitor their children’s digital playtime.
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