Abstract

        Is strong commitment to computer (or video) games symptomatic of weak families, parents and children? Does such commitment negatively affect the behaviour and character of the child later on in the teen years? How are girls affected differently from boys? Given games commitment, how do education, parents, and religion influence teen behaviour?

        To help answer these questions we provide detailed tables and charts of committed and uncommitted computer game players, children playing at least weekly, and less often or never. Some 76% of children were committed in 1995, 67% of the girls, and 85% of the boys. The behaviour of teen girls and boys are also analyzed, given their situation in 1995.

        Computer commitment was found to have very few effects on behaviour, perhaps because of how the commitment was measured - girls were more likely to have had sex, to have sold illicit drugs, and to weigh more; while boys were more prone to damaging things, to get upset, to get angry, and to be more pessimistic about their future.

        Unexpected results concerned the influence of having one rather than two biological parents. The negative influences on teen behaviour were many and negative, but more significant for girls than for boys. It was also unexpected to find that boys in Quebec engaged in more negative behaviour than their Ontario counterparts, more so than girls.

        As expected, education of the child's main parent was found to positively influence teen behaviour, both teen girls and boys. Also expected, the conservative Christian children turned out better in many respects than either the Roman Catholic or liberal Christians, or the religiously unaffiliated. Non-Christian children were best of all in some respects.

        One set of analytical results apply to both girls and boys in order to examine the differences due to the sex of the teen. For example, parental conflict reported by the teen was analysed with the following results: teen girls more inclined to report it than boys, Roman Catholic, liberal Protestant and religiously unaffiliated teens more than conservative Christian teens, and teens in British Columbia more than teens in either Ontario or Quebec.

        Another example, the degree of closeness to the teen's mother and father was found to be closer for boys rather than girls, to decrease with age, to be closer for non-Christian teens rather than Roman Catholic, conservative Christian, or religiously unaffiliated teens, and to be less close in Quebec than Ontario, the Prairie provinces or British Columbia.

        General conclusions include the importance of studying girls and boys separately, the importance for parents of education and two-biological parent homes, and for children, religious affiliation. Parents and children may also take note of some negative and unhealthy consequences of frequent playing of computer and video games.

        Researchers may wish to measure the frequency of play in greater detail, and perhaps add internet and television commitment to form a media commitment variable. And while the results of this study control for other influences in the model, more sophisticated modelling is recommended for future studies.