Online Games Develop Social Skills

Playing online games and socializing on Facebook – are they dubious time wasters that create generations of social inadequate people or is it just a generation gap that prevent old people from seeing the beauty of poking? 

A new online games study joins the long list of researches and conclusions regarding the negative or positive impact online games have on those who are occupied playing them, mainly the younger one. Now, after being accused of destroying marital life, making players undesired job candidates, benumbing their attitude to violence and exposing young kids to all sorts of evil, a new study reaches the conclusion that online games actually develop social skills of children and teenagers. 

The Digital Youth Project, researched by Mizuko Ito of the Irvine's department of informatics in UCLA and sponsored by MacArthur Foundation, contradicts the common conjecture that computer kids have inadequate social skills. The research shows that multi-player online games such as World of Warcraft and social networks such as Facebook contribute to the social lives of their users, serving as an additional communication tool, on top of instant messaging, text messaging, phone conversations and face to face enouncing. 

The research also emphasizes that parents and educational institutions that block or limit the access to the popular social networks like facebook and myspace to spare them some time on traditional social activities, might just achieve the opposite by cutting them off their natural, internet obsessed society. On the other hand, they might still be protecting them from child abusers.