I have been “holding off” on writing this blog, partly for fear of sounding like Chicken Little (”The sky is falling”, “TV rots your brains”, “Video games are evil”) and partly for fear of sounding like an old fogie (”Things were better when we played dominoes by candlelight”).

But I cannot hold my tongue any longer. Just today I received notice about a major study that came out this spring - a meta-analysis of 130 research studies with over 130,000 youth studied. The finding?

Violent video games make youth (both male and female) more likely to engage in personal aggression themselves. Surprise, surprise. Do you mean to tell me that watching and participating in repeated fantasy action of shooting, stabbing, hitting, and murdering others — done for hours and hours, over days, weeks, months and years — actually impacts a person’s behavior? I’m shocked.

Let’s look at some of the other negative characteristics typical of most video game playing:

Video games are primarily self-focused.
I know you can play games with others (either in person or on-line), but who really plays video games for the purpose of serving others? (Except the occasional parent who dislikes them.) It’s true, they can be a form of entertainment — used for relaxing and leisure time, for chilling. But how many of you have noticed that your children (or husband) become more self-focused, agitated, irritable and less willing to do their responsibilities after they have played for two or three hours? It is about them and what they are doing — how dare you interrupt their game and ask them to study, mow the lawn or clear the table?

Video games and the skills they build have virtually no transferability to real life. How many jobs are there that require superfast hand/eye coordination and decision-making? I used to say there were no careers for which video games prepared you for. I was corrected during a lecture — these skills are useful in the military for those who pilot drones and bombs to their destinations. I stand corrected. Now how many of those jobs are there? And how many people grow up with that career dream? That leaves about 75+ million American youth and young adults under 30.

Video games steal time and mental energy from tasks that could be truly productive and/or skill building. In business, this is known as “opportunity cost” — you only have so much time and energy. And if you spend that time and energy on Halo or World of Warcraft, then that time and energy can’t be spent on physical exercise, studying, learning to play an instrument, or working a part-time job. We are literally wasting hundreds of millions of hours of potentially productive time with our youth and young adults.

Video games create a false sense of competency. I am convinced that one of the draws of video games — especially for those students who struggle in school — is that it gives them a sense of competency. They are able to beat an adversary, win at a certain level of difficulty, or obtain virtual rewards and treasures. The problem is — the competency isn’t real; what good does it do them away from the virtual world? One time I had a significantly overweight 10 year old boy tell me he was really good at tennis. After further inquiry, I found out he was good at tennis on the Wii, but he actually believed he was good at playing tennis. We need to help our children build self-confidence but through tasks which they will use in real life.

Video games can become highly addictive, especially to individuals with ADD/ADHD. It is well-known among those who work on college campuses that many young men (primarily) spend 3 or more hours a day playing videogames. And it is documented that at least 10% demonstrated addictive behaviors — not being able to quit even if they want to, losing weight because they do not stop to eat, and probably the most common — disruptions of sleep due to playing patterns. [I recently had parents report that their 12 year old was getting up in the middle of the night after his parents had gone to sleep and was gaming for hours — they finally realized why he was always so tired.] Neuroscientists are now finding associations between the adrenaline-rush and addictive behaviors that are associated with high-stimulation video games.

(I am aware that there are exceptions to each of the above-raised points, but these are common characteristics of those children, teens, young adults and adults who play a lot of video games.)

So that I don’t just criticize and run, let me give parents some practical suggestions for dealing with the challenges associated with the video game craze in our culture.

1. Don’t accept the “everybody does it” excuse. Oh, yea. That’s a good one — right up there with smoking, under-age drinking, casual sex, smoking pot and every other generational foolish decision young people have argued with their parents about. But the problem is: almost everyone else is doing it. So parents, show some backbone. Set rules and guidelines. Fight the battle. Be “mean”. And stick to what you know is right.

2. Set limits. Take the power cords. Lock up the controls. Set on-line limits. Require that schoolwork and/or chores are done prior to any time playing games. And limit the time — 30-60 minutes on weekdays (preferably none, if you can get away with it), and 1-2 hours per day on weekends. More than that, and you can’t really monitor the limits.

3. Use the “real life” rule. Ask yourself, your husband (husbands are often part of the problem), and your children: “Would we encourage this behavior in real life?” Do I want my kids to steal cars, mug people, shoot and murder others? “Oh, it is just a game”, it is argued. Ok, then why don’t we encourage games that have your teenager rape others and burn houses down with people still in them? Give me a break — why do we need research to show us that repetitive thoughts and fantasy actions increase the probability of those actions actually occurring in real life?

4. If your children are still young, delay getting games as long as possible. The battle is harder to fight when the games are in the house. Don’t worry. They won’t be deprived — they will still play at their friends’ houses. Wait. Wait. Wait. If you want to, get them a Wii. Do the educational games. But lay off all the Gameboys, X-boxes, Playstations, Internet-based games — you and they will be better off. (I could tell you a personal story about my four kids — now ages 19 to 27, but you wouldn’t believe me.)

I know this entry has a bit of an edge and angry tone. Sorry (sort of). I wish I could communicate what I want without the irritability, but sometimes there are things worth getting angry about.

For those of you with students in school, think about how you are going to manage this summer — they are off school, have lots of free time, and you will be at work. Do you want your kids playing 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 hours of video games a day? (Ten to twelve hours isn’t unrealistic.) If not, what are you going to do about it now?

ADD, ADD / ADHD, addictions, ADHD, Adult ADD, Character Development, Family, Fathers, Gen Y, Learning, Life success, Millenials, parenting, Video game addiction

This past weekend I had the privilege of helping facilitate a board meeting for a family foundation. One of the goals of the meeting was to begin to more fully integrate the next generation (currently twentysomethings) into the foundation’s activities and financial giving over the coming years.

Part of the process included looking at philanthropy through the lens of daily life, rather than conceptualizing it as just large financial gifts given to non-profit organizations. Here are a few thoughts from that process.

A reminder that philanthropy comes from the Greek words phileo (practical love) and anthropos (meaning man or mankind). So essentially philanthropy is the act of demonstrating practical love to others.

So, at a very basic foundational level, if we think about philanthropy in daily life, it is really embodied in kindness and treating others as you would like to be treated.

We then can take practical love toward others to the level of our lifestyle decisions and how our daily decisions impact our local and global communities. Here is a list of practical areas of daily life with some brief notes of issues to consider in each area.

*Groceries (packaging, buying in bulk, local producers)
*Transportation (utilizing public, automobile choices, flying)
*Clothing, Personal Items (used, consignment, self-made)
*Gifts (consider not giving objects, self-made, Third world, charitable donations)
*Electronics (recycling computers, cell phones, TV’s / screens, energy efficiency)
*Housing (green, energy efficiency, remodeling)
*Banking (utilizing community-based, socially-involved
*Services (using global professionals from accounting, web design)
*Physical health (healthy lifestyle, exercise, equipment)
*Medical treatment (natural, preventative, high tech, insurance)
*Recycling (paper, plastic, glass, metal, in general)
*Recreation / Entertainment (low cost, low impact, big business)
*Financial investments (socially responsible, mission and program related investments)

We then also discussed ways to incorporate charitable giving in one’s daily life context (versus just thinking about annual financial gifts). These included:

*Looking for needs in your local, daily community.
*Observing organizations that intersect with your life.
*Volunteering your time, service and expertise.
*Giving financially from your monthly income.
*Attending charitable events and fundraisers of organizations you want to support.

No major earthshaking revelations here, but possibly some helpful reminders in how we can think about others through our daily life decisions.

charitable giving, Gen Y, Life Balance, Parenting Adult Children, philanthropy, wealth transfer, wealthy families, young adults

Over the past weeks I have been gathering some research articles from various publications that I thought had some interesting bits of information.  Here they are.  The topics include:  research on how Western culture and Asian culture affect problem-solving approaches, video game addiction, infant anesthesia and later learning disabilities, and age biases in the workplace that are not found to be true according to research.

Psychology Research Bits & Pieces

From the June 2009 Monitor on Psychology:

  *Infants exposed to anesthesia during surgery may be at greater risk for learning disabilities.  Researchers from the Mayo Clinic found that:

            -infants who had been anesthetized two or more times before age 4 had a 60% increased chance of having learning difficulties;

            -infants who had three or more exposure to anesthesia by age 3 doubled the child’s risk for learning problems later in life.

*Nearly one in 10 youth gamers addicted to video games.  A study of over 1100 youth 8 to 18 found that addicted gamers exhibited behavioral patterns similar to pathological gamblers and they played video games 24 hours a week (2x as much as non-addicted gamer).  Addicted gamers were also twice as likely to have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.

*Research does not support many age-biases that exist in the workplace.   Research reported in the June 2009 APA Monitor on Psychology  states that:

            -Older workers are happier with their work than younger workers and were in as good physical shape as their colleagues.

            -Older and younger workers want many of the same things from their work:

Schedule flexibility, opportunities to learn, a supportive supervisor, and promotion fairness.

            -There is no evidence to support the belief that Millennials and Gen Y workers are not hard workers.  They do, however, look for identity-based work – something they enjoy that suits their abilities and interests.  And younger workers tend to asset themselves and question the status quo.  Dr. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett from Clark University states, :  The fact that they are willing to question and offer criticism is something that can make an organization better.”

            -Millennials do look to change jobs more frequently but are willing to explore career alternatives within the same company.

One interesting point raised by Dr. Elisa Perry at Columbia University: “It’s hard to know how many of the things we are seeing are about generational differences or age differences. . . Those are potentially very different things.”  For example, will these characteristics of different age groups still exist in 15 or 20 years as the younger generations move into later life stages?

“East versus West: A psychology professor dares to compare how Asians and Americans think.”  Forbes, May 11, 2009.

Richard Nisbett, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Michigan has been researching the differences in how North Americans and Asians think.  He proposes the following differences:

            -Asians see things in context, while Westerners focus on the point in hand.

            -Asians are more holistic in their thinking while Americans are more analytic and reductionistic.

            For example, in presenting a virtual aquarium on a computer screen, “The Americans would say, ‘I saw three big fish swimming off to the left.  They had pink fins.’  They went for the biggest, brightest moving object and focused on that and on its attributes,”  Nisbett explains.  “The Japanese in that study would start by saying, “Well, I saw what looked like a stream.  The water was green.  There were rocks and shells on the bottom.  There were three big fish swimming off to the left.”

            A key difference Nisbett found may help explain differences in financial thinking and choices.  Canadians predict a stock whose value is rising will continue to rise, while Chinese think what goes up will come down. This might help explain why we are prone to economic “bubbles” and suggests, when things are going well, Americans should possibly temper their optimism.

            Nisbett, in his book, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, examined why Asian-Americans score higher on the SAT than other Americans and why Asian students do significantly better on math and science exams than U.S. students.  He concludes, “Asian intellectual accomplishment is due more to sweat than to exceptional gray matter.”  The Asian cultural value of obligation to family drives a deeper work ethic, Nesbitt believes.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

For me, personally, the two most interesting findings are the high rate of video game addiction and the debunking of the myth that Asian students are brighter than students in the U.S. — they just tend to work harder.

career development, Cultural differences, Gen Y, Learning disabilities, Life Stages, Millenials, Video game addiction