The Effects of Online Games

RESEARCH ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF ONLINE GAMES

In one representative sample of American adolescents, aged 10 to 19, kids who played video games spent 30% less time reading and 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 2007).

There is an enormous gender disparity in the amount of time spend on videogames. While less than 1 in 50 incoming freshmen women played more than 10 hours of videogames per week, 1 in 10 males admitted to doing this (UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 2009). The disparity increases with 10 times more males than females admitting to playing more than 20 hours per week.

One study of a game relating to numerical analysis in an engineering curriculum found that “students experienced significantly more intellectual intensity, intrinsic motivation, positive affect and overall student engagement when completing homework” (Coller & Shernoff, 2009, p. 315).

Ip et al. (2008) analyzed the relationships between gaming frequency and academic performance among 713 students. The study found that frequent gamers, who spend more than 2 hours per day playing video games, performed less well than infrequent gamers. Hellström et al. (2012) examined the relationship between gaming time, motives to play, and negative consequences because of playing Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

In addition, Ip et al. (2008) found that the number of genres played is associated with academic performance in examinations. That is, gamers who play four or more game genres generally perform less well in examinations.

The association between flow and video-game playing has been studied in nascent studies with different findings. For example, it was found that the flow was not related to the amount of time spent on playing video games (Lee et al. 2007) and to online game addiction (Wan et al. 2006)

Ventura et al. (2012) constructed an online survey with 252 undergraduate students and a positive indication was found...