Video games rob reading, homework time: U.S. study
Straight from the "I can't believe someone spent money on this research" files....

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Boys who play video games on school days spend 30 percent less time reading and girls spend 34 percent less time doing homework than those who do not play such games, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

But they said video games do not appear to interfere significantly with time spent with family and friends.

"Gamers did spend less time reading and doing homework. But they didn't spend less time interacting with their parents or their friends, nor did they spend less time in sports or active leisure activities," said Hope Cummings of the University of Michigan, whose study appears in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

The study comes as U.S. doctors voice growing concern about the long-term effects of video games.

Prior studies have linked prolonged video game play with attention difficulties and poor academic performance. And some doctors have suggested the games interfere with social development and might be addictive.

Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater at the University of Texas at Austin wanted to see how these games affect academic pursuits and social relationships.

They gathered data from a nationally representative sample of kids aged 10 to 19 in 2002 who tracked their activities on a random weekday and a random weekend day.

Of the 1,491 who participated, 534 adolescents or about 36 percent played video games. About 80 percent were boys.

They found boys spent an average of 58 minutes playing on weekdays and one hour and 37 minutes playing on a weekend day. Of those sampled, girls spent 44 minutes playing on a weekday and an hour and four minutes on a weekend day.

Read all about it here, courtesy of reuters.com

Eric