One of the first sentences in the article stuck out to me:
>I wanted my kids to play games instead of passively consuming endless amounts of YouTube.
I'm kinda surprised that modern parents consider watching youtube a worse activity than gaming.
>I wanted my kids to play games instead of passively consuming endless amounts of YouTube.
I'm kinda surprised that modern parents consider watching youtube a worse activity than gaming.
Watching content is a passive activity. At best you're accumulating information.
It's a trick question, both are great.
After 30 minutes of YT entertainment, kids are clearly disengaging their brains. After 30 minutes of video games, kids are talking to each other and actively commenting, hypothesizing, or empathizing.
Would I prefer that they be reading a book? Yes. Is playing a video game better than watching YT? Also yes.
It's not immediately obvious to me.
Neither is better or worse but they're different forms of mental exercise.
Games are harder to compare as they're pretty active, it probably depends on the game.
And sure you could pick the most lowbrow possible book and compare it to an educational game, but you can also pick a highbrow book and compare it to the worst "designed to addict you" pay-to-win overwhelmed with random buttons and popups braindead mobile game.
¹ The barren wasteland that is online discourse doesn't count for obvious reasons.
Sure, it's not the peak of literary achievement, but hey, you gotta walk before you can run.
If I read historical novels (or nearly similar like medieval fantasy) then my experience of playing Civilization is enhanced, because I can consider all the little stories that might be going on in Civ. Founding a city by the sea vs founding a city by a great chain of mountains is a very different consideration (beyond just "numbers").
If I play Civ, then my novel reading experience is enhanced. I might read something like a Bourne novel, yet never ask questions like "what is the world beyond the immediate story locality?" "What are the politics, or continents, or logistics, or military situation like?" Its just popcorn action plus names.
If I read something like the Hunger Games, I might ask "what Civ result would have caused such destitution that everyone is playing PUBG for food?"
Kids have a different relationship with algorithms wherein they don't recognize they're being targeted with low quality stuff, watch a bit of it, and start a feedback loop.
I can "fix" my YT recommendations within a day if I went exploring and started getting fed stuff I don't want, but I find younger kids are happy to just fire through it as though it's TikTok.
Generally they end up with very low quality click bait very quickly. I'd rather my son have at least a tinge of mental engagement if he's going to have a screen.
This is the way it goes, I think.
Which games? Candy crush - no. Nandgame - yes. (https://www.nandgame.com/)
And there's a whole spectrum in between. Games are not equal. "Screen time" is a terrible generalisation most of the time.
But it's still not something you should allow/encourage kids to do for several consecutive hours or instead of sleeping.
Youtubers are mostly thirsty, talentless repeaters of mis/information. Many of these Youtubers get coaxed into stupid belief systems, and they start to spread it to their viewers.
Gaming doesn’t have a political / message objective. The youtube algorithm previously (and maybe now) has been trained by superPACs to recommend alt-right and conspiracy videos.
It seems obvious to me that being actively engaged in (curated) gaming is better than passively consuming videos that YouTube recommends.
With gaming kids can develop:
- Motor skills and hand-eye coordination
- Communication and collaborative skills
- Problem solving skills
- Learning to cope with losses and setbacks
- Social interactions
Of course, I'd rather them play with Legos, run around and play or even play boardgames with me or each other. But if it's a choice between playing games or watching YouTube, I absolutely prefer them to play games.
I read an article about a study a while back that showed that people who less brain activity when watching TV than when staring at a blank wall*
Another study I read studied children (up to 3 years old) that watched educational DVDs supposed to teach them new words. Turns out that the children who watched those DVDs scored lower on vocabulary tests than those that didn't watch them*
*: I'm too lazy to look up the references, so you'd have to Bing them yourself.