Yeah the article should be students who do "something else instead of studying have lower grades".

And gaming can be very addictive, which means the hours get longer and longer everyday until kids end up spending zero hours on their studies/homework.

Anything can be very addictive, the only thing different about games is availability, which is pretty much 24/7.

Even then, the logic is not directly "less games = more study". I knew someone pretty addicted to WoW, he decided to quit one day where we hoped he would study more. Turned out he didn't, he just used his new free time towards drugs and alcohol. Oh well...

I knew someone pretty addicted to WoW, he decided to quit one day where we hoped he would study more. Turned out he didn't, he just used his new free time towards drugs and alcohol. Oh well...

People with a addiction problem will, most probably, always be addicted to SOMETHING. If its WoW, other games, drugs'n'booze, gambling, smoking, or that new hip potato diet.

I know that I am horribly generalizing a very complex behaviour here, but that is what I found true in many cases. People that stop smoking often start eating more... causing an even bigger weight gain. People that try to bring down their weight with sports often start to become quite addicted to sports (IF they stick to it), until it MIGHT turn into another destructive behaviour just like eating too much.

The general problem here seems to be that the kids are just bored to death by their homework. Will they still be able to become better and concentrate on study IF YOU FORCE THEM? Yes of course. Do you want to make sure they are not procrastinating with electro shocks, or by supervising them fulltime while studying, by taking away their phones and PCs or whatever? I am not so sure this is beneficial to the kid in the long run.

People tend to forget its not the good school grades that make a happy, successfull adult out of a teenager... its what they learned during their youth, in and out of school (and hopefully continue learning until old age). Grades are just an inaccurate measure of skill in singular topics. Can they be important later to start the career a young adult wants to get into? Yes of course. Might they be sorry for their bad grades later on? Yes of course.

Will they have learned something from having a much harder time getting into a school thanks to bad grades from earlier schools? YES OF COURSE!

Would they have learned the same thing (that you need to work your ass off in life if you really want to be among the best) if they were forced to study and make good grades? MOST- PROBABLY - NOT!

People learn from mistakes they make themselves, less from the expierience of others. Hence why history repeats itself all the time!

• One of the biggest problems of todays society is not allowing human beings to make mistakes... even small ones like slipping grades in school, which, if compared to grave mistakes like human death because of human errors, is rather easy to correct.
• Kids are meant to be kids first and foremost. It is an important time to learn and find itself, and a lot of this will not come from school. Many of us on this board wouldn't be here if not for sometimes rather time consuming gaming in the past. I guess I am not the only one that paid for it with slipping grades at times. Would I want to miss these expieriences for better grades today? Hell no! (not taking into account nobody will ever ask for your grades again if you have worked for multiple years in the field... if somebody does, that is a big red flag about the employer, if you do not want to work in a company more interested in the image than the actual work!)
• Society has thankfully moved in a direction where changing course later in life is possible, if difficult at times (At least in many western countries). That means that the "fresh start" can still be had even for adults that missed their chance to "ace" their education in their teenager years.

I really think the concerns of parents nowadays about their kids education is getting out of hand. Not to mention the governments and schools concern for the grades of kids, which is 99% driven by their interest in getting ranked higher in international comparisons.

This is mostly about parents using their kids as avatars for their own unfullfilled dreams, and schools/governments trying to get more money and prestige thanks to better students.

Its almost 0% about the kids actual wellbeing.