Community Games and Civic Calling

Breaking news: Teens play video games. A lot.

But it might not always be so bad for them.

That’s one conclusion of a new report examining teens’ gaming habits, socializing, and civic engagement.

While the study found that 99 percent of teenage boys and 94 percent of teenage girls play video games, it didn’t find that those who very frequently played games were more socially isolated or less likely to participate in civic activities.

Those who played games with a civic component to them were actually more likely to engage in such activities.

“It matters what kind of game you play more than how long you play it,” says Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project and a coauthor of the report, which was released Tuesday. “There’s a debate about gaming … that is quite polarized…. The intention behind this report is to open up and put some numbers behind some of these questions about games.”

To start, those numbers make it clear that video and computer games have become a standard part of most adolescents’ lives. Not only do nearly all teens play them, but nearly one-third of teens play games every day, and an additional 21 percent play games three to five days a week.

While boys reported playing slightly more often and for longer periods of time than girls, there was little difference of any kind when it came to ethnicity or income.

And the researchers found no basis for one of the frequent criticisms of gaming, that kids who play video games are loners who are socially isolated. In fact, they discovered, three-quarters of all teens play games with others at least some of the time, and about half play with friends they know from their offline lives. Daily gamers were just as likely to communicate with their friends and spend time with them face to face as their peers who don’t play games often.

‘Loner’ image out: For teens, video games often social | csmonitor.com

Very cool. Click on the link for more from the Christian Monitor.  Props to Kidscreen for the find.

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WoW, that’s kiddy citizenship?

What’s this? An article on a mainstream news site proclaiming that gaming will not turn our children into mini Charles Mansons? It’s true! According to a story published at MSNBC, the Pew Internet & American Life Project is discovering that online games are positively affecting our children’s civic experiences. The research doesn’t simply track how much time kids are spending in social games, but it’s delving into what the children are doing with that time.

Can WoW make your child a better citizen? – Massively

There are LOADS of awesome youth VW’s out now that are aiming for citizenship & youth role modeling (Club Penguin, Dizzywood -the amazing Scott Arpajian just spoke about this at Virtual World Expo too, Elf Island, Garden Party, Zookazoo, Handipoints Chore Charts, Minyanland, etc etc etc).

I love the fact that people are associating this to entertainment (non-underlying-educational vw’s for youth), and just the online MMO experience in general.

When I joined WoW (which, I must admit, was a relatively short experience, but fun none-the-less), it was funny to watch the good Samaritans of the world help me out as a Noob. This woman player was waiting for freshly born noobs to show up, then she’d whisper “follow me” and proceed to lead us (well, me) through the early stages. I, of course, found this HILARIOUS since I wasn’t there to “battle” or level up- merely to watch the play patterns of the WoW MMO folk. I followed the crazy, yet-well intentioned “whisper” woman around, doing what she told me to do – or failing at it as goofily as possible (yes, I used the word ‘goofily’). She spent like 40 minutes making me follow her around (i kept acting like a confused toddler on a field trip), and then – out of the blue – she says “Good luck, young one” and runs off into the oblivion to help other hopeless noobs. Talk about citizenship.

It’s fun to watch kids in beta worlds help each other out – showing where games are, or items, etc… giving hints and tips. They stick up for each other (or for the under dog) and have a strict sense of what is fair/right (until they get incredibly bored with the same-old, same-old, that tends to be where behaviors change for the… interesting).

There’s going to be a lot of good found in virtual worlds for youth, and I look forward to seeing all the information unfold in the coming months, years, etc. Woot.

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