beakrake

beakrake t1_j7ss1eb wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Video game playing causes no harm to young children's cognitive abilities - regardless of duration of game playing and video game genre, study finds by BringinItDirty

K/D is hardly relevant to all video games, but to take it a step further and generalize by saying video games can't/won't help in any cognitive way, I whole heartedly disagree.

Mechanics, architecture, resource management, critical thinking skills, problem solving, reading, hand eye coordination, time management, navigating electronic systems and menus, etc, etc...

There are a lot of benefits to being more open minded about such learning potential, because the future is here and computers aren't going away any time soon.

If that's what they like and what catches their interest, why shit on those interests to shoehorn them into doing things your way or learning things you like?

Sure, they probably can't list "Minecraft" on their college resume, but if they used that platform to learn to read at an early age, or can mentally conceptualize 3D structures really well because of it, the future results will likely speak for themselves in time.

The long and short of it is, you should capitalize on whatever your child is enthusiastic about to help teach them new things on the DL whenever you can.

Whether that's stick ball, musical instruments, video games, or something else entirely, the endeavor to teach them goes a lot smoother when they actually enjoy the activity and are subtly learning core skills that do carry over to RL situations, without having to force the square peg into the round hole by teaching them in a more conventional, but far less interesting (to them,) way.

Learning in an unconventional manner is still legitimate learning after all, and anyone who doesn't realize that is doing their child a real disservice.

TLDR - Knowledge comes in many forms, just because it comes in an unfamiliar package doesn't nessesarily make it worse.

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