You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's MaryL.

If I told you that your child or your younger sibling or your niece spent hours yesterday

playing video games, would that bother you?

It used to bother Yuki Nguchi.

I thought it was brain rot and frivolous and that they were wasting time that they could

be using to do something really productive and developmentally valuable.

I mean, that was the pressure I put on myself as a parent.

Yuki is a correspondent on the science task at NPR and a mom to two boys.

And lately she's been reporting on kids and gaming.

To be clear, when we say gaming and games, we're not talking about dodgeball.

Games have been around since the start of civilization, right?

Like Tic-Tic-Toc-Toe or poor games.

Things have been around for a long time like that, right?

But we're talking about gaming right now because it's digitized.

Yuki says the fact that the play happens over technology can make gaming sound like it's another

species of thing entirely.

And it can make parents and caregivers wary of it.

But she says there are a lot of benefits kids can get from gaming, depending on what the game is.

There are so many kinds of games.

Sports games, word games, games where you go on a quest or you race a car.

There's even online chests.

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