Building skills with games

Even though many librarians and other adults deplore the amount of time young teens spend on video games, American Libraries reports on a conference that reported research supporting many games as skill-builders for young people. Speakers at the conference pointed out how complex many games are and how players must learn the weaknesses and skills of numerous characters in the games if they hope to win games such as Pokemon. The settings of some of the video games are related to real life history and may even encourage youngsters to learn more about the wars and other struggles that have shaped our world. Over the years, adults have fretted about the bad effects of children's recreational choices, but it may well be that once again the adults are wrong.