Video games good for girls,but only if…

Worried about your daughter's fetish for video games? Well,it's better for her if you join her and enjoy a game or two together,scientists say.

Worried about your daughter’s fetish for video games? Well,it’s better for her if you join her and enjoy a game or two together,scientists say.

Researchers at the Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life in the US who examined the impact of video games among young children found that girls who enjoyed their games along with their parents have a number of advantages.

Those girls behaved better,felt more connected to their families and had stronger mental health than their peers who play without any parent,found the study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

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Professor Sarah Coyne,who led the study,said: “The surprising part about this for me is that girls don’t play video games as much as boys.

“But they did spend about the same amount of time co-playing with a parent as boys did.”

The findings come with one important caveat: The games had to be age-appropriate. If the game was rated M for mature,it weakened the statistical relationship between co-playing and family connectedness.

For their study,Prof Coyne and colleagues involved 287 families with an adolescent child,aged 11 to 16 years. While ‘Mario Kart’,’Mario Brothers’,’Wii Sports’,’Rock Band’ and ‘Guitar Hero’ topped the list of games played most often by girls,games such as ‘Call of Duty’,’Wii Sports’ and ‘Halo ranked’ among the top choices boys.

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For boys,playing with a parent was not a statistically significant factor for any of the outcomes the researchers measured (positive behaviour,aggression,family connection,mental health). Yet for girls,playing with a parent accounted for as much as 20 per cent of the variation on those measured outcomes.

Coyne and her co-author Laura Padilla-Walker offer two possible explanations for this gender differences.

“We’re guessing it’s a daddy-daughter thing,because not a lot of moms said yes when we asked them if they played video games,” Padilla-Walker said. “Co-playing is probably an indicator of larger levels of involvement.”

It’s also possible that the time boys play with parents doesn’t stand out as much because they spend far more time playing with friends. The researchers plan to explore the basis of these gender differences in more detail as they continue working on this project.

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On past studies that linked frequent video game playing to poor relationships with friends and family,Padilla-Walker said: “If you spend huge amounts of time absorbed in any activity,it’s going to affect your relationships.”

And that brings us to some practical parenting advice illustrated by the new study on playing video games with kids,she said.

“Any face-to-face time you have with your child can be a positive thing,especially if the activity is something the child is interested in.”