Tag Archives: gamefication

Do Video Games Really Make Kids Smarter? (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on December 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

In Part One I addressed Mr. Zicherman’s claim that video games make kids smarter. I argued that the only brain benefits of playing video games are related to areas concerned with problem-solving and multi-tasking.

Therefore the bold claim that kids are “smarter” from playing video games should not be made without pointing out the many limitations of such definitions of “smarter” that leave off creativity, sustained linear thought, deep reflection, self-analysis, and the many other forms of intelligence recognized by psychologists, such as emotional and musical intelligence.

Now I would like to address the second claim make by Mr. Zicherman: that the future will be shaped by the “gamefication process” and that such a transformation is a positive thing.

IS THE ADULT WORLD “TOO SLOW” FOR KIDS?

One of the more startling portions of Mr. Zicherman’s presentation is when he asks, “Is our world too freaking slow for our children to appreciate?” He follows this by adding, “The days of sitting down on a Sunday afternoon with a good cup of tea to read a book – I just don’t believe our kids will be doing that in the future.”

This claim is made in his musing that perhaps the increase of ADD/ADHD is due to the difference between the speeds of children’s worlds and adults’ worlds – a claim that has no validity with any ADD/ADHD medical research.

However, the more general point is something to consider: is the future of the world going to be more reflective of tea and leisurely book reading or the rapid, multi-sensory nature of video games?

Mr. Zicherman believes that the “gamefication process” will only increase, that “Generation G’s desire for game-like experiences are shaping the future.”

And Mr. Zicherman believes this is a good thing.

To support his point, he references an elementary teacher named Ananth Pai, who replaced standard curriculum with video game based learning for 18 weeks, during which time he saw his students’ math and language scores rise from below third grade level to mid-fourth grade level.

Proof, right? Not quite.

For one, any time you can find a way to engage children you will see immediate results. The games Mr. Pai utilized were both individualized and collaborative, and they stimulated visual, auditory, and tactile learning styles. Plus, the were fun, so the kids were engaged. All of these are good things and anytime a teacher can achieve them, great things will follow.

The issue is that video games are not the only means for achieving such success. More importantly, too much emphasis on such experiences leads to some very negative results not addressed by Mr. Zicherman.

VIDEO GAMES AND DOPAMINE

As Mr. Zicherman himself points out, “games are wired to produce a particular reaction in people.” They encounter challenges and must overcome them, a process that releases dopamine, the chemical that the brain actively seeks out to reward itself.

Video games take advantage of this aspect of our biology. That’s why kids who struggle to concentrate in school can stay glued to a game: the constant reinforcement of little rewards.

The problem is that constantly receiving rewards over and over is not the same thing as sustained attention. The long time spent playing the game is not for the one big payoff, but rather the hundreds and thousands of little dopamine releases.

It is less like the completion of a long-term project and more like getting candy after each math problem completed.

So while Mr. Zicherman believes video games provide healthy intrinsic motivation, it seems more similar to drug addiction: we keep trying to feed that need for dopamine (it’s no wonder drugs are called “dope”).

THE VALUE OF SUSTAINED ATTENTION

The claim that video games enhance sustained attention, then, appears to be misleading.

But I fear more than just that. If, in fact, the future is dominated by “gamefication,” then all over the place we will have constant feedback and rewards for every little thing we do.

And that is the real danger here.

As I’ve pointed out in previous articles, including a recent one on the brain development problems that come from allowing children to constantly interrupt, kids must learn to wait.

As both Dr. Ellen Galinsky and studies done on the famous Marshmallow Test attest to, the ability to delay gratification is essential in the development of focus, sustained attention, concentration, the executive functioning of the brain, achieving goals, remembering rules, and thinking flexibly.

In short, learning to wait helps form a person with self-control and the ability to work towards a goal even when the reward is a long way off.

I do believe little rewards along the way are good. After all, who doesn’t look for little shots of dopamine during the day? Encouragement from a friend, a love note from a spouse, hugs from your children – we thrive on these little things.

The issue is that life rarely offers constant rewards for what we do. Often we must endure long periods before the pay off, which sometimes never comes and we must get back up and try again.  I believe that a world based on gamefication presents a reality that is manipulated to reward us too much.

Not only that, but at different ages we seek out different outlets for our dopamine releases. As I wrote in “Going for the Big Pot of Gold,” kids, teens, and adults respond very differently to the types of rewards we receive. We cannot treat all humans identically – it simply does not match up with the development process.

THE POSITIVES OF VIDEO GAMES

It would be unfair to simply point out the flaws in Mr. Zicherman’s argument. That is not my goal, and I invite you to watch his video, where you will see for yourself the many challenging and interesting points he makes.

Mr. Zicherman points out five things that help increase fluid intelligence: seeking novelty, challenging yourself, thinking creatively, doing things the hard way, and networking. He believes that video games can provide all these things.

I agree with him, and I do believe that video games can be used thoughtfully in an educational setting with great results.

I also agree with his feeling that the world is moving at an ever faster speed that our children and children’s children are much more comfortable in than we are as adults.

At the end of his talk, Mr. Zicherman implores his audience not to worry about the kids and to get into the game with them rather than fight the game trend.

To an extent, this is also good advice. Too often generations clash simply because neither side is willing to see the world from the others’ perspective.

However, we are still the adults. While the kids play the games, we read the articles about the effects. We know that while video games won’t necessarily make a child violent, they can have a negative effect on children predisposed to violent behavior and can desensitize children about violence.

We also know that video games do not always promote healthy behavior or brain development. Yes, they can have positive effects if used wisely. But without wisdom and careful thought, I fear that the “gamefication” of the future will not produce the result we desire for our children.

So jump in and get to know your child’s world. 

But do not feel you must accept it without question, just as you should not accept claims such as “video games make kids smarter” without first looking deeper into the issue through sustained concentration borne from years of book reading, in-depth reflection, and linear thought.

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Do Video Games Really Make Kids Smarter? (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on December 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

The subject of video games and kids always evokes strong opinions within me, so recently when I saw a TED Talk called “How Games Make Kids Smarter,” I knew I had to watch the video.

My original intention when I clicked on the link was to debunk the basic premise that video games make kids smarter.

However, presenter Gabe Zicherman gave a talk that touched on more than just the one area, and by the end of his presentation, I felt challenged to respond more fully.

Mr. Zicherman is not merely a video game enthusiast but the chair of the Gamefication Summit and the author of several books and blogs related to gaming. He is 36 years old and not some aging CEO of some mega-company trying to exploit kids for cash, but a true fan of video games. Therefore, I felt it only fair to take him seriously.

The topic of video games is too massive to tackle completely here. But I do want to address Mr. Zicherman’s two main claims: 

  1. That the use of video games is good for children’s brains and actually makes them smarter.
  2. That the future will increasingly be structured by the process of “gamefication,” a term Mr. Zicherman defines as “the process of using game-thinking and game-mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems”

DO VIDEO GAMES MAKE KIDS “SMARTER”?

If you’re using the definition of “smarter” that Mr. Zicherman uses here, then the answer is yes.

However, in the presentation, the word “smart” is almost exclusively linked to the idea of IQ, which I have argued in many other articles, blogs, and books is not the only way to define human intelligence.

In support of his claim, Mr. Zicherman references how video games help kids develop their problem-solving skills.

A somewhat similar finding was made by Dr. Gary Small, Director of the Center on Aging at UCLA. Dr. Small found that in elderly patients, regular use of the Internet helped strengthen patients’ brains in areas related to multi-tasking and problem solving.

When that discovery was made, blogs all over the Internet lit up with huge claims about how “the Internet makes you smarter.”

The problem is that you can’t make that sweeping a claim. As Dr. Small himself stated, “repeated exposure to technology alters brain circuitry” and “our brains are adapting to a new multi-tasking technological culture.”

Similarly, Mr. Zicherman’s claim that video games makes kids “smarter” must come with the same caveats: this is a limited definition of human intelligence focused primarily on problem-solving and multi-tasking. As I wrote in an article called “Screenagers and the iGeneration,” these very same brain developments occur from doing many other things, such as crossword puzzles.

ARE WE LOSING OUR “READING BRAIN”

It was for exactly this reason that Nicholas Carr wrote the article “Is Google Making Us Stoopid” and his follow-up book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. I have previously covered that book’s many interesting points.

But I do want to raise an issue that Carr writes about that Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language at Tufts University, has also become worried about: that we are slowly losing the benefits gained from the “reading brain” we have developed.

Our brains are naturally distracted. The Internet and video games take advantage of this by promoting – and even rewarding – our tendency to ping about from thing to thing.

But a very different kind of thinking is promoted by book reading: long, sustained attention and concentration, deep reflection, and linear thought. As Wolf points out, this type of brain is developed incrementally over years of maturation that eventually allows us to go beyond the information to become true comprehenders of ideas rather than mere decoders of information.

In short, reading provides us something that nothing else does.

In 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts concluded in a study that, “Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.”

And a study conducted by the Joint Information Systems Committee found that people’s current research habits exhibit a “tendency towards shallow, horizontal, ‘flicking’ behavior” characterized by power browsing.

The issue, then, is the movement away from prolonged concentration and sustained reflection in favor of multi-tasking and information-gathering behavior, as opposed to information assimilation.

We are trading sustained thought for efficiency and speed.

The result, as Carr points out, is brains that think more shallowly and less in-depth. Or to use his analogy, we’re skimming across the water on jet skis but rarely drop anchor.

SO VIDEO GAMES ARE BAD?

What watching Mr. Zicherman’s presentation reminded me of is that no debate is one-sided. The issue of video games is complicated.

So I would not want to make some claim that they are 100% “bad.”

I do worry about the amount of time children spend playing on them and the type of content they contain – two issues Mr. Zicherman addresses that I will cover in Part Two.

My purpose in writing this is to provide closer examination of certain claims used primarily because they make nice headlines, such as “Video Games Make Kids Smarter.”

It is important to do the research yourself. Otherwise you are susceptible to faulty claims, made by either side of the debate.

For example, Mr. Zicherman claims that the rise in the rate since the 1990s of the Flynn Effect (a term referring to the incremental increase of America’s overall IQ every decade) might best be explained by the increased use of video games. People often make the same claim about the Internet.

However, as many researchers have pointed out, the areas of increase on IQ tests have predominately been on sections of the test regarding spatial relations. As our society becomes ever more visually inundated through television, computers, and video games, so, too, has our ability to sort out visual puzzles.

But that is hardly the same thing as claiming that our IQ scores improve from playing Super Mario Brothers.

In Part Two I will address claims about the influence video games will have on the future, as well as the negative side effects that invariably come along for the ride for kids who play them.

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