To be successful and advance during video game play, children must practice effective combinations of instinctive pattern recognition, speedy reaction time, strong hand-eye coordination and conscientious multi-tasking while managing limited resources. By nurturing these skills, video games help children improve manual dexterity, motor and spatial skills that can prove valuable in real world, yet are not necessarily enforced as effectively in classroom settings.
Adapting to the world of each game and developing strategies to win also call for children to exercise logic and practice advanced thinking for problem-solving and strategy implementation within the confines of the game's rules. As highly valued skills in the job market, such strengths are essential to career advancement and real world success. Information consultant Mitch Wade stated that when he conducted a survey of professionals who had regularly played video games as children, he found that they were the individuals in business who demonstrated the most essential skills to success in any industry, among them risk analysis, multi-tasking and teamwork.
While repetition is a powerful teaching tool that helps reinforce the positive effects of video game play, excessive exposure to violence in many of the industry's most popular games also serves to enforce poor behavioral and anger management skills. A 2004 study published in the Journal of Adolescence found that teenagers playing video games with violent content for extended periods tended to be more aggressive, more prone to fights with peers, less focused on academics and more frequently insubordinate toward authority figures. In 2000, six medical organizations issued a joint statement highlighting the tendency for media violence to emotionally desensitize children toward violent acts in the real world. Such children become more likely to resort to violence to settle conflict and less likely to intervene in another person's defense when they witness a violent act.
A study presented in 2000 to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation showed that not only did most parents surveyed enforce no time limits on the amount of time their children spent playing video games, but also that they were oblivious to the ratings or content associated with the video games their children played most. In a 2010 Denison University study, researchers immediately bestowed video game systems upon one group of young boys participating in the study, and promised video game systems to a second group following four months of participation. Those receiving game systems immediately spent fewer after school hours on academics than did members of the second group. As a result, they also received lower reading and writing scores and higher instances of academic problems reported by their teachers.