Video Games and Attention

Lock your consoles away! Video games cause attention problems! At least, that's what some people seem to be trying to imply with a study.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6268047.html

Some readers will probably notice a few problems, even if they don't bother to read the comments.

"According to the research, the link was the same whether the study participant played games or watched TV"

Clearly, based on this evidence, no-one can claim that "video games are bad for you" without also claiming that "TV is bad for you." It does not show that playing video games is any worse than watching TV. Indeed, I'd say that many videogames are a lot better for your attention than a lot of what gets shown on TV. Note I say "a lot", not "all" or even "most".

Secondly, two hours a day is a moderate amount of time for people to be playing videogames, so claiming that there is a "correlation between gaming more than 2 hours per day and troubles staying on task" just points out the well-established idea that too much of one thing can be bad for you. Also, the correlation is merely "small to moderate". I myself spent a lot of time playing videogames when I was in school and still managed to get good grades in all my GSCEs.

Then there's the fact that correlation does not imply causation... nor can it tell you which factor causes which. It could easily be that people with attention problems particularly like watching TV or playing games, rather than that watching too much TV and spending too much time playing games CAUSES attention problems.

Last, but not least, the coauthors of the study are "two familiar voices with a history of decrying deleterious effects of games", which makes the chances of the research being unbiased fairly slim.