Those who game daily are better at math and those who use Facebook cannot calculate well. What is true about this new study?
Games enhance student performance
It’s an eternal back and forth. Video games make you stupid. No! Yes! Oh!
A new study by RMIT University in Melbourne has once again addressed this prejudice and analyzed the online behavior and PISA results of more than 12,000 Australian adolescents aged 15.
The result may surprise some people. Because those who play online games daily scored on average 15 points more in the math tasks of the PISA study than classmates who refrain from such games. In the scientific area, the difference was even 17 points. Gamers were also clearly better in reading.
Social media users are worse at math
It looks significantly worse for all users of social networks. Those who write messages on Facebook daily have on average 20 points less in the mathematical area than classmates who keep away from social media.
However – and this must be made clear – these correlations are not monocausal according to the researchers. So it cannot always be definitively stated what causes and effects are. For example, someone who spends the whole day posting various videos or chatting with friends on WhatsApp may neglect their school obligations. On the other hand, it is “also possible that the weaker students maintain social contacts with others more strongly” and therefore increasingly resort to social media.
Ultimately, internet consumption is only one of many influencing factors that affect a child and contribute to success and failure. More strongly influencing the grade point average is (who would have guessed?) skipping classes or having a migration background.
Mein-MMO says: At least for MMOs, it is still relatively easy to understand why heavy players perform better in math. Anyone who has listened to two professionals discussing “theorycrafting” could very well think they landed in math class. Memorizing, such as boss fights and their abilities, trains the brain and certainly contributes to improving the memorization of content.
