Published online February 1, 2007
PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 2 February 2007, pp. 413-414 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-3299)
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Lack of Association Between Video Game Exposure and School Performance: In Reply

Iman Sharif, MD, MPH
Department of Pediatrics
Children's Hospital at Montefiore/Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, NY 10467

James D. Sargent, MD
Department of Pediatrics
Children's Hospital
Dartmouth Medical School
Lebanon, NH 03756

Dr Block identifies an inconsistency between our call for parents to limit television and video game use to no more than 1 hour per night. He correctly points out that there was no relation between video game use and grades after controlling for other covariates. When we made our recommendation, we were working on the principle that time spent using media, whether it be using video games or television, is time spent away from school-related activities, and that has the potential to harm school performance. From this "displacement" perspective, we have little reason to believe that 4 hours of video game time would be any different from 4 hours of television time. The problem with proving that is, although many adolescents spend >4 hours watching television, very few spend >4 hours using video games, so our power to detect an adverse effect is limited with video games. Hence, we felt that it was prudent to call for weekday limits on video game use as well as television use.

We fully agree that the topic is potentially charged and is complicated by the relative dearth of scientific research. That is why we chose not to challenge the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that parents "[l]imit children's total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day"1 on the basis of the results of just 1 cross-sectional study.

REFERENCE

  1. American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Public Education. American Academy of Pediatrics: children, adolescents, and television. Pediatrics. 2001;107 :423 –426[Abstract/Free Full Text]
PEDIATRICS (ISSN 1098-4275). ©2007 by the American Academy of Pediatrics




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