Children

There is a pretty large discussion that is almost always ongoing about younger kids playing video games. One side of the argument wants children to be playing outdoors, interacting with other kids like they did when they were young. Others say what's the harm in playing video games? The Kaiser Family Foundation http://www.kff.org/entmedia/3271-index.cfm has an interesting fact sheet about children and video games. One of these "facts" is that 92% of children ages 2-17 reported playing video games and more than 2/3 of children have a video games system in their room. I personally don't see a 3 year old kid having a Nintendo in his/her room.

Some of the impacts they say video games have on children are good and some are bad. A good impact is that there are researchers who believe video games are the first step in a child understanding and becoming computer literate. The video games improve spacial visualization and visual attention skills which they say can help reduce the differences in these skills between boys and girls. Another statistic they bring up is that 25% of children say video games interfere with their homework and/or school performance. They also bring up the violence issue, stating that video games possibly account for adolescents' bad behaviors and aggressiveness. I think that statement still needs to be researched more.