by Annette
13. April 2007
As the mother of two teenage daughters, I work hard at limiting "screen time" - tv, internet, movies, etc. But one exception I've made recently, much to their surprise, is that I let them loose on video games. An article I read over vacation in the Jan/Feb edition of the Utne Reader, "Playing With Our Heads", pushed me over the edge.
The article quotes the authors John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade of Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever. The authors claim that younger generations do better in business precisely because of their experience with video games. "Beck and Wade argue that the gamers somehow intuitively acquired traits that many more-senior managers took years to develop and that their nongaming contemporaries still lack." Most notably those skills are competence in strategy and comfort with risk and failure.
In my audio download of the same name as this blog, I talk about video games as an analogy to chess. Perhaps letting your child loose on gaming (within reasons of course) is a legitimate way to build their genius.
