Video Games and Pre-Adolescence. Use, Habits and Socio- Educational Implications According to Gender

Abstract

Video games are now a widespread form of entertainment among pre-adolescent youth, but they can also become powerful tools for game-playing in the classroom and for improving the teaching-learning process. Video games facil itate learning in various fields of knowledge and benef it the development of mult iple ski lls from the recreational and creative, but can also cause negative effects such as addict ion, sedentarism, decreased academic performance or sociabili ty problems. The aim of the research is to know the habi ts of consumption of video games in pre-adolescence and i ts socio-educational implicat ions, depending on the gender of the participants. The sample i s composed of 825 student s f rom var ious public educat ional centers in Andalusia (Spain), aged between 9 and 14 years. The research is developed from a quantitative, descriptive, ex post facto, transversal and correlational methodological approach, using the instrument "Quest ionnaire on video game consumption habits" (López, 2012) for the col lection of informat ion. The results indicate a clear di fferentiation in the responses issued according to gender, indicating that boys are more interested in video games, know more about them and use them more frequently than girls. In addit ion, i t is boys who demonstrate a more compet it ive atti tude when playing video games.