Developmental Impacts of Video Game Content

[Dr. Douglas Gentile]: But again, it’s not that games are bad or games are good. The content matters greatly. And so in a number of studies, we’ve also shown that when kids play prosocial games where you help for or help care about other characters, help them out with things, that in fact kids gain in empathy and increase their helpful and cooperative behaviors. But then there are other problems, too, that in playing some types of games can increase racial and gendered stereotypes and prejudice and even discrimination. There’s a lot of research on school performance showing that in general, greater screen time leads to worse school performance. And there is starting to be a literature demonstrating that with greater screen time come greater attention problems.