Karl Kapp has a great blog post about why video games are better than youth sports. 

Recently I appeared on a local radio talk show to speak about some of the benefits of Video Games for education. It is a popular topic for radio talk shows because it is somewhat controversial and many people have strong opinions on the topic (not really based on fact but strong opinions never-the-less.) You can listen to the show and see some of the interesting comments at the link Educating through video games — Radio Smart Talk, Tuesday, June 23

On the show one of the callers accused me of just pointing out the positive aspects of video games and ignoring the negative aspects and then he went on to explain why organized kids sports were so much better at teaching kids life skills like, teamwork, cooperation, sportsmanship, over coming adversity, etc. Then he contended that video games can’t teach ethics, empathy or other important skills. The implication is that kids learn far more positive lessons in organized kids sports than playing video games.

This is a common argument and seems to have merit on the surface but it has always bothered me. Do sports always teach these laudable values? Are organized kids sports “perfect” teachers of morals and teamwork while video games are “evil.”

To determine if this is right, I did some research to find out just what kids learn playing organized sports.

Just click the link to read Karl’s research and the benefits that video games can bring.  Do you agree?  Disagree?  What are your thoughts?

Mark Viquesney