A new study has found that children’s cognitive abilities are not impacted by playing video games, even for hours at a time. The research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Media Psychology, surveyed 160 fifth grade students in the U.S. and found that there was no correlation between their performance on a standardized cognitive test and the amount of time they spent playing video games or the type of games they chose.
“Our studies turned up no such links, regardless of how long the children played and what types of games they chose,” Jie Zhang, associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Houston College of Education and a member of the research team, said in a press release Tuesday.
Students reported playing an average of 2.5 hours of video games a day, with the most dedicated gamers reporting up to 4.5 hours per day. Researchers also gathered information on the genres of games they played, as some other studies previously linked high-speed action games with enhanced cognitive skills.
The study also found that video games that claimed to help develop or train cognitive skills also appeared to have little impact on the students’ CogAT results — indicating that while video games may not have a negative impact on children’s brains, they may also not have a directly positive one either.
“At least now we understand that finding balance in childhood development is the key, and there’s no need for us to over-worry about video gaming,” Zhang said.
After analyzing the data from the 160 fifth grade students, researchers found that the frequency of daily gaming and the specific video game genres had no correlation with their performance on a standardized cognitive test. This indicates that parents do not have to worry about cognitive setbacks among video game-loving children, up to fifth grade. However, researchers noted that extremely long durations of gaming did correlate with a very slight dip in CogAT results, and that parents should be mindful of obsessive behavior.
