Can video games affect children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills?∗

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between video game playing and children’s cognitive and non-cognitive skills. According to the literature, video games have a potential to improve children’s cognitive abilities. Video games may also positively affect such non-cognitive skills as the ability to sustain attention and pro-social behavior. On the other hand, there are concerns that video games can teach children to behave aggressively. The Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used for the analysis. The key advantages of this data set are its panel nature, which allows addressing the endogeneity of video game playing, and the time diary component, which provides a reliable measure of children’s video game time. I find that video game playing has a positive statistically significant effect on some of the cognitive skills. More specifically, an increase in video game time is found to improve children’s ability to solve problems. There is no statistically significant effect of video game playing on children’s reading skills, once other variables are held fixed. The findings of this study support the hypothesis that video game playing may improve certain non-cognitive skills. Moreover, there is no evidence that video game playing increases aggressiveness in children.