Japan Government Investigates Video Games
- July 10, 2003 15:58 PM PST
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A 10-year-long study is in the works.
The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced plans today to conduct a research study over the next ten years on the effects of video games upon children. The study, which comes at a time when games are under fire in Japan for their effects on the minds of young children, will begin next year and is projected to cost in the tens of millions of dollars.The governmental ministry's study plans to study the development of one thousand children over the next ten years, as they mature from newborns to toddlers and grammar-school students. The study will record their basic lifestyle patterns, including how much TV they watch and how many games they play, and the ministry will gauge their mental health and emotional personality through neural scans and questionnaires sent to their parents. Using the information from the study, the ministry hopes to gain insight into the effects of entertainment choices on a young child's brain development. The results could also be used to improve educational methodology in Japan's public schools.
Video games are increasingly being criticized by Japanese parents and politicians for the effects they may have upon the mental development of the kids that play them. Neurological professor Akio Mori released a study last summer that found reduced brain-wave activity in people playing games, which can be linked to shunning social activity and losing one's temper easily.
Games have also been implicated in the case of Shun Tanemoto, a four-year-old boy who was kidnapped and thrown off a multistory parking garage July 1 in the city of Nagasaki. The alleged assailant, a 12-year-old student whose name has been withheld by police, was reportedly an avid gamer who repeatedly abused the victim over the past few months. "This is a crime carried out by a child who played with nothing but video games, never with other people," wrote Naoto Kan, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, in his daily Internet column. "Is this a sickness of our society?"
