A little video game-playing linked with better-adjusted children

Shutterstock http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-83664169/stock-photo-cologne-august-psvita-or-playstation-vita-at-gamescom-the-most-important-european-video.html'src=H0zUTI9ClkDqiDqzwCtZYw-1-42 A new study suggests video game-playing for less than an hour a day is linked with better-adjusted children and teenagers. The research, carried out by Oxford University, found that young people who indulged in a little video game-playing were associated with being better adjusted than those who had never played or those who were on video games for three hours or more. The study finds no positive or negative effects for young people who played 'moderately' between one to three hours a day. However, the study, published in the journal, Pediatrics, suggests that the influence of video games on children, for good or for ill, is very small when compared with more 'enduring' factors, such as whether the child is from a functioning family, their school relationships, and whether they are materially deprived. This is thought to be the first study to examine both the positive and negative effects of gaming using a representative sample of children and adolescents. It involved nearly 5,000 young people, half male and half female, drawn from a nationally representative study of UK households. Participants, between 10 and 15 years old, were asked how much time they typically spent on console-based or computer based games.