NPR is reporting another study linking watching TV and playing video games to difficulty in paying attention in school. Apart from the usual critique that correlation is not sufficient to claim causation, this study does not add much to parenting as we practice it. Most parents agree that too much TV or video games is not good for kids.
What caught me is a quote in the article from Dimitri Christakis, who said, “I think that the concern is that the pacing of the program, whether its video games or TV is overstimulating and contributes to attention problems.”
He’s got it backwards. It isn’t the fast pace of the games, it is the slow pace of whatever is competing for attention. We have all been in meetings where the flow of information is like molasses on a cold day, for example, when the boss is addressing another employee, not you directly. For a few minutes there, you have to force yourself to not look at your phone. There is so much you could accomplish in those few miutes: you could check e-mail, update your Facebook status, or send a text to someone else in the same meeting making fun of the boss.
And if you remember your school days, teachers can be really boring. It is all too easy to understand why kids are not paying attention in school. Our task might be to teach our kids how to focus attention on what is appropriate at that time, much like we have learned to focus on the boss and not our smart phones.
