Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Australia studied various standard test scores for 12,000 Australian 15-year-old children as well as asked them about their online habits. The results are in support of non-violent online gaming, which is that students who play online games nearly every day scored 15 points above average in math and 17 points above average in science.
“When you play some online games you’re solving puzzles to move to the next level and that involves using some of the general knowledge and skills that are found in mathematics, reading and science, that you have been taught during the day,” states RMIT Associate Professor Alberto Posso, who conducted the research. Posso also goes on to say that “Video games could help students to apply and sharpen skills learned at school and Teachers should consider incorporating popular video games into teaching – so long as they’re not violent ones.”
However, on the other side of things in regards to social media outlets like Facebook and Snapchat Mr Posso said that teenagers who use those outlets every day scored 20 points worse in maths than students who have never used social media. “Students who are regularly on social media are, of course, losing time that could be spent on study – but it may also indicate that they are struggling with maths, reading and science and are going online to socialise instead.”
As we know with any study, this is a select group of people numbering in this case 12,000. However, the results are still compelling and indicate quite clearly that the preference for pass time out side of school definitely benefits students more when it is spent playing video games and not on social media. Except for RGM social media, naturally!
So game on people.
