Many parents fear buying a video game console or system for their children because they want their child to be successful in school and don’t always want them playing video games instead of completing school work. According to NBCNews, a study found states that young boys that don’t have their own video game system progress faster in reading, writing, etc. than young boys that do have their own video game system. The same study found that the young boys with their own video game systems averaged about 40 minutes a day on there console/system, which would cut into social activities and their studies.

While growing up, I had many electronic devices such as a Wii, Nintendo DS, iPod Touch, Xbox 360, Xbox One S, etc. Video games never really affected my school work as a kid, and still don’t affect my school work and grades now. My parents would only let me play video games on weekends because they wanted me to focus on school and homework during the week, which helped my grades. Now, my parents do let me play video games during the week as long as my homework and studying is done. I believe that if my parents would have let me play my video games during the week as a younger kid while I had school and homework, I would have developed horrible time management skills that would have followed me into junior high and high school.

According to NBCNews, Robert Weis and colleague Brittany C. Cerankosky of Denison University in Ohio placed ads in the local newspapers trying to recruit families that had boys ages 6-9 and did not have video game systems for their study. 64 boys were selected for the study and they were all promised a PlayStation gaming system. The study found that the boys who were given the system spent more time playing video games than doing their school work, and weren’t interacting socially with friends and family. After four months, the boys were playing video games way more, their reading and writing scores were lower, and their teachers reported learning problems to their parents and the biggest gap was in their writing scores. The children with these bad grades and the ones struggling need to limit themselves on their video game time or just not play at all and focus on school. The children that play video games and have good grades don’t need to worry about there video game time because they are still working on their school work before they start playing on their systems.

Students can also get a positive impact out of playing video games instead of studying, according to The Guardian. Children who always play video games tend to do better math tests, reading tests, and academic science. A study in Australia found that the students who play video games every day scored 15 points above average in their math and reading tests and 17 points above average in science. Alberto Posso, from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, had taken in data from high school students across Australia and looked at students who spent more time on their social media rather than video games and he found out that the students who spent more time on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or other social media platforms will be more likely to score four percent below average. Also, in the same study, the students who heavily use social media have a lower attention span, which can be linked to poorer academic performance.  A study performed by Columbia University, for example, showed that children from ages 6-11 that had high video game usage had an increased chance of intellectual function and finishing school with good grades.

Kids that play video games that have good grades in school at the same time should be able to play their video games on weekdays while they have homework as long as the games aren’t interfering with their school work. If parents let their children play their video games when they are struggling in school, they aren’t setting them up for success in life and the children that spend more time playing video games than doing their school work need to do the opposite. Children need to find a balance between video games and school, and it will help their time management skills in the future.