By India McCarty
Many see video games as a negative component of many young men’s adolescence, but social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt recently shared they might not be so bad.
“Video games are not as harmful to boys as social media is to girls. Sometimes there are even certain benefits from them,” he said during an appearance on “The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.”
Haidt explained that there are a few issues with the video games, though, including “the addiction that about 10% of boys develop, which is called problematic use, which is compulsive use.”
“It interferes with other aspects of life,” he said of this problematic and compulsive use. “It often looks like addiction.”
The Psychiatric Times also published a piece on problematic use, explaining that it “is often recognized in clinical practice, but can be challenging to treat.”
“Clinicians can start by educating families on how video games interact with the brain’s reward system, making it difficult for some to disengage,” the publication explained. “Gaming grants players immediate gratification, mediated by an abnormal surge of dopamine in their neural reward pathway.”
The other problems increased video game use can have? “The attention fragmentation [and] the loss of the ability to do things that aren’t full of dopamine is crippling,” Haidt explained.
Related: New Study Reveals How Teenagers View Video Games
Haidt has also spoken to The New York Times about the pros and cons of letting your son play video games.
“Don’t just think about screen time. Think about: What is it that makes it good or bad?” he counseled parents to ask themselves.
Haidt continued, “Because I remember, just as video games were coming in, my friends and I would get together and we’d say: What do you want to do? Play video games? We’d do that for a little bit. And then we’d go off and do something else. Nothing harmful about that.”
Now, multiplayer video games still let boys connect with each other as they play, Haidt said, adding, “My son played Fortnite. I didn’t let him on until he was 13. But they would laugh their heads off. The boys at least had that synchronous laughter. They’re not in the same room, so it’s not as good. But they at least had that. Whereas the girls are each alone on their own Instagram account. They might laugh at a meme or something, but they’re not having shared laughter.”
While it’s always a good idea to step back from screens whenever possible, many parents will be glad to know that there are some upsides to their sons’ video game use.
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