PLAYING ONLINE GAMES SAFELY: RULES FOR YOUNG GAMERS & PARENTS

Parents often think that if their children play online games they are missing out on healthy human interaction and social skills. However, many parents don’t realise that games may be tools that are just as useful as books, movies, sports - each in their own way, says Andrey Sidenko, an expert on children’s online safety at Kaspersky.

According to Kaspersky research, the main activities kids are interested in online are videos and YouTube - and queries related to video games in particular (32.3%). Many parents are not aware that games are not only for fun but surprisingly, they may also help children to level up useful skills, perform better academically and build better relationships with other people.

Games as an educational tool

It is not only left to books, films or art to have a positive effect on the development of a child, gaming should also be included on the list! Today there are many beautiful and complex games that require a child to sharpen their fine motor skills, increase their attentiveness, foster persistence, teach them to make quick decisions and plan ahead sometimes even several steps at a time.

Some games, Minecraft for example, are popular with not only students, but also teachers and not so long ago a special version was released with assignments for a number of school subjects. Multiplayer games are an excellent way of honing communication and teamwork skills, while simulators give free rein to the imagination. A recent study by the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, says that some of the areas of the brain responsible for learning are better developed in gamers. Not only this, the study showed that children who played more than 15 hours a week performed better on a critical thinking test than those who only played occasionally.

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