“Concern is spreading among parents and mental-health professionals that the exploding popularity of computer and video games has a deeper dark side than simple couch-potatohood,” reports U.S. News [Hat tip Joanne Jacobs]. “According to the Media Research Lab at Iowa State University, about 8.5 percent of 8-to-18-year-old gamers can be considered pathologically addicted, and nearly one quarter of young people—more males than females—admit they’ve felt addicted.”
A more nuanced take on video games is offered by Cheryl Olson, a psychiatry lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the author of “Grand Theft Childhood.” Olson, who has conducted research on video games and their impact on children, says in an interview with the Australian website The Age, “that games can be both healthy and problematic, but in ways that are hard to convey in a few sound bites on the news.”
“For most young teens, video and computer games are a routine part of life, like TV, recorded music and books,” Olson says. “The average teen boy routinely plays video games with violent content; a not inconsiderable number of girls do, too. Teens often play violent games to cope with feelings such as stress and anger; they also play for creative reasons and to learn new things. It’s not normal for teens (especially boys) to play video games alone all the time.”
Her research notes that young teens who play any Mature-rated (age 17+) game on a routine basis are at higher risk than teens who play other types of games for behaving aggressively (for example, beating up someone, damaging property for fun) or having school problems (for example, poor grades, getting in trouble with a teacher) at least once over the course of a year. They are also more likely to report being threatened by someone with a weapon. The risk of problems increases if young teens play mostly mature-rated or violent games. “These relationships between violent game play and behavior/school problems are statistically significant correlations, very unlikely to occur by chance,” Olson observes. “But correlations don’t tell us about cause and effect. For example, children with aggressive personalities may play more violent games, or children who get poor grades may express their frustration by playing violent games.”
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You think parents of American high-achievers put pressure on their kids? Try this:
“At the age of four, Zhou Jiaying was enrolled in two classes—Spoken American English and English Conversation—and given the English name Bella. Her parents hoped she might go abroad for college. The next year they signed her up for acting class. When she turned eight, she started on the piano, which taught discipline and developed the cerebrum. In the summers she went to the pool for lessons; swimming, her parents said, would make her taller. Bella wanted to be a lawyer, and to be a lawyer you had to be tall. By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a piano lesson and a prep class for her entrance exam to a Shanghai middle school. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard.”
So begins a fascinating article in the current National Geographic, “Gilded Age, Gilded Cage,” by Leslie T. Chang, which examines the opportunities and anxieties facing China’s emerging middle class. A study has shown that nearly half of Chinese urban residents are at health risk due to stress, with the highest rates among high school students. While the story’s larger point is to paint a picture of a society in turmoil, the pressure to succeed placed on Chinese youth is front and center:
“You were only as good as your worst subject. If you didn’t get into one of Shanghai’s top middle schools, your fate would be mediocre classmates and teachers who taught only what was in the textbook. Your chances of getting into a good high school, not to mention a good college, would diminish. You had to keep moving, because staying in place meant falling behind. That was how the world worked even if you were only ten years old.”
BabyFirstTV, a subscription-based network, is available via satellite and cable for $4.99 a month. Its programs air 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are targeted to children ages 6 months to 3 years. It claims to be an “educational tool that provides a positive learning environment and an engaging experience for both you and your baby.”
“Did you just shudder? Or did you reach for the phone to call DirecTV?” asks Buzz McClain of the McClatchy Newspapers. “Lots of adults have done both. Since its launch on Mother’s Day 2006, BabyFirstTV has found its way to 30 countries, making the network available to some 80 million homes. A DVD line of the programming is coming to stores soon.”
“BabyFirstTV transforms traditional TV into an interactive and educational tool that relies on the television as a medium to deliver high-quality programming and an engaging experience for both baby and parents,” the channel’s website breathlessly announces. “BabyFirstTV can enrich the connection between parents and baby and give them new opportunities for learning and playing together.”
“The general idea of parking babies in car seats on the floor in front of a television troubles childhood development professionals,” writes McClain. “The American Academy of Pediatrics says simply, “Don’t do it!”
Meanwhile the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood added BabyFirstTV to a suit filed with the Federal Trade Commission a month after the network launched, complaining that it, as well as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby line of DVDs — were falsely advertising educational benefits without evidence.”
Helicopter parent? Why merely hover over your child when technology will let you be a black helicopter parent?
The New York Times looks at computer programs that provide daily, real-time data on kids’ in-school performance, from attendance to test scores. Programs like Edline, ParentConnect, Pinnacle Internet Viewer and PowerSchool are “changing the nature of communication between parents and children, families and teachers,” reports the Times. “Citing studies showing that parental involvement can have a positive effect on a child’s academic performance, educators praise the programs’ capacity to engage parents.”
What did you learn in school today? Forget it. Now you can know before your kid walks in the door.
On school days at 2 p.m., Nicole Dobbins walks into her home office in Alpharetta, Ga., logs on to ParentConnect, and reads updated reports on her three children. Then she rushes up the block to meet the fourth and sixth graders’ buses. But in the thump and tumble of backpacks and the gobbling of snacks, Mrs. Dobbins refrains from the traditional after-school interrogation: Did you cut math class? What did you get on your language arts test?
“Thanks to ParentConnect, she already knows the answers. And her children know she knows. So she cuts to the chase: “Tell me about this grade,” she will say. When her ninth grader gets home at 6 p.m., there may well be ParentConnect printouts on his bedroom desk with poor grades highlighted in yellow by his mother. She will expect an explanation. He will be braced for a punishment. “He knows I’m going to look at ParentConnect every day and we will address it,” Mrs. Dobbins said.
At best, the programs can help kids stay on top of things and act as an early warning system for trouble. At worst, it’s another lever for over-anxious parents to pull. “At an age when teenagers increasingly want to manage their own lives, many parents use these programs to tighten the grip,” notes the Times. “College admission is so devastatingly competitive, parents say, they feel compelled to check online grades frequently. Parents hope to transform even modest dips before a child’s record is irrevocably scarred.”
Officials in Australia have an answer for truancy: throw the parents in jail. New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma’s proposal has been pilloried by education and welfare experts who say the plan is over the top, and “will only hurt the most disadvantaged students.”
The plan announced earlier this week gives courts the power to impose “special orders on parents of children who don’t attend school, including the ability to force them into rehabilitation, mediation or counselling. If they fail to comply, they could face jail,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
“It’s not about punishing parents that are doing the right thing, or because of circumstances beyond their control - either the kids are disobedient, or there is a problem with drugs or alcohol - it’s about those parents who are physically, mentally, or financially able to do the right thing but point-blank refuse to accept their responsibility,” says Iemma. The new legislation was aimed at a “very small minority of parents who simply won’t do the right thing.”
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