Online gaming may boost school scores but social media is wasted time, study suggests

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In what could be music to the ears of many parents, teenagers who regularly play online games are more likely to get better school scores, an Australian study suggests.

Key points: RMIT research suggests gaming helps boost results in maths, science and reading

Online gaming helps develop analytical and problem-solving skills, researchers say

Scrolling through Facebook, Instagram or chat sites was shown to hinder academic success

Research released from RMIT University has found gaming helps boost results in maths, science and reading.

But researchers said scrolling through Facebook, Instagram or chat sites had the reverse effect, by hindering academic success in high school.

Associate Professor Alberto Posso from RMIT's School of Economics, Finance and Marketing said online gaming appeared to be a more useful way to spend time online for teenagers, compared with social media.

"Kids that are spending more time on online gaming — for example in a maths test — they're likely to score 17 points above the average, which is about 4 per cent above the average [test score]," he said.

Associate Professor Posso used data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to analyse the online habits of 12,000 Australian 15 year olds, which he then compared to their academic results.

He said the PISA data revealed that online gaming helped young people develop analytical and problem-solving skills.

"Sometimes [players] have to understand some of the principals of chemistry even, so they really have to understand science," he said.

"Some psychologists have argued that massive online player games can be beneficial to cognitive development."

'You're not really going to solve problems using Facebook'

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found spending hours on social media was mostly wasted time for teenagers, in terms of academic performance.

Australian teenagers who used Facebook or chat sites every day scored 20 points worse in maths than students who never used social media, the research said.

"You're not really going to solve problems using Facebook," Professor Posso said.

"What's interesting, from an economic perspective, there's a very high opportunity cost of time, where we're spending a lot of time doing something that may not necessarily be associated with performance in school.

"When you play online games you're solving puzzles to move to the next level and that involves using some of the general knowledge and skills in maths, reading and science that you've been taught during the day."

The research has been published in the International Journal of Communication.

Topics: schools, education, games, social-media, australia, melbourne-3000