Video games can make children more creative?

Updated on: Monday, November 07, 2011

Most parents may agree that playing video games is a waste of time and harmful for their kids. But, a new study has suggested that the games could actually be firing up children's imaginations.

The University of Michigan study, which involved nearly 500 12-year-old kids, found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories.

The effect wasn't caused by engaging with technology itself using mobile phones, the Internet or computers was unrelated to creativity, Daily Mail reported.

Past studies have claimed that the games stunt children's development and even make them more violent. The current study didn't attempt to address either of these issues, but used a recognised measure of creativity to assess the effect of games on children's development.

Lead researcher Linda Jackson, a professor of psychology, said the study is the first evidence of a relationship between technology use and creativity.

The findings, published in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour, should motivate game designers to identify the aspects of video game activity that are responsible for the creative effects, Jackson said.

"Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimise the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values perhaps a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment," Jackson added.

For their study, the researchers surveyed 491 kids and gauged their creativity with the widely used Torrance Test of Creativity that involved tasks like drawing an "interesting and exciting" picture from a curved shape, giving the picture a title and then writing a story about it.

Overall, the study found that boys played video games more than girls. But, regardless of their gender, race or type of game played, greater video game playing was the only technology to be associated with greater creativity.

Video games can make children more creative?

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