Video Game Use and The Development of Sociocognitive Abilities in Children: Three Surveys of Elementary School Students1

The purpose of the present study was to examine the validity of the popular hypothesis that video game use will prevent children from socially adjusting. Three surveys of elementary school children were reported. The primary results were as follows: (a) The frequency of video game use had no correlation with children's popularity among classmates. (b) The frequency of video game use had slightly negative correlations with boys' sociocognitive abilities such as empathy, cognitive complexity, and cognitive abstractness. (c) However, it was likely that the negative correlations were not due to the causal relation that video game use affected boys' sociocognitive abilities, which supported the hypothesis, but rather the causal relation that video game use was affected by their abilities; and (d) In the case of computer use, such as word processing or programming, the frequency of use had few correlations with sociocognitive abilities.