Just a craze: Video games don’t help kids get smarter

Twenty-three years ago, US political philosopher James Flynn came across a curious trend: average intelligent quotient (IQ) scores in every industrialised nation on the planet had been steadily increasing. Even though many scientists have trashed the very notion of IQ, there is no denying that children of every new generation have been outsmarting the previous one. Flynn’s observations (known as the Flynn effect) have now been accepted and has in turn raised fundamental questions: Why are children getting smarter? Is the human brain evolving at an unprecedented pace?

In the new book Everything is Bad for You science writer Steven Johnson argues that what’s making us smarter is precisely what we thought was making us dumber: television and video games. According to him, the pop culture ? represented by interactive visual media ? continually challenges our brain and forces it smarten up. His outrageous notion simply ignores more obvious explanations for kids getting smarter.

Several studies have documented significant IQ gains of children, including those living in the poor countries in Africa, Asia and South America. In many of these impoverished nations majority of people still don’t have access to television, let alone hi-tech games like Grand Theft Auto.

The most striking IQ rise has been observed in northern Kenya and Uttaranchal in India. A study on children in Kenya, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that within just 14 years (1984-1998) their IQ rose by 15 points. Similar rise was observed in the Garhwal region in India by experts from the United Nations. In both cases the factors that led to it were micronutrients ? things like iodine, folic acid or vitamin A ? which work wonders in boosting brainpower of the newborn when supplied adequately to pregnant mothers. Both the studies also revealed that the IQ rise has a lot to do with the parent’s literacy, small family structure, primary school education and the children’s overall health.

Perhaps unaware of these evidences, Johnson writes boastfully: “It’s neither nutrition nor child-rearing practices.... those interventions levelled off in most industrialised countries shortly after World War II, just as Flynn effect was accelerating.”

Johnson’s premise is on a shaky ground because his theory is based on a small cross section of children in the US. He must have been awestruck by the so-called smart kids’ ability to play with visual interactive media. He vouches for the Genx children’s smartness, but glosses over the fact that these couch potatoes are no good in mathematics or basic science. Their superior visual-spatial skills haven’t enhanced their basic cognitive traits like wisdom, practical sense and social sensitivity.

Simply put, technological toys hardly make the kids intelligent. You have to provide them with something better than junk food. Expose them to a healthy nurturing. Pop culture is simply not enough to make them brighter and more sensitive.