Michigan State psychology professor Linda  Jackson freely admits she had no idea

what a bombshell her findings  about video games would prove to be.

Jackson is the lead researcher  on a study published last year in the academic journal

"Computers in  Human Behavior" that shows 12-year-olds who play video games are

more  creative than those who don't. The research also demonstrates that a  child's usage

of cellphones, computers or the Internet has no  statistical correlation to creativity.

Needless to say, such findings  brazenly defy decades of research that suggest

prolonged exposure to  video games would harm children's brains. Conventional wisdom

has held  that a link exists between playing video games and negative traits like  social

isolation and violent behavior.

"The results did surprise me,"  Jackson said. "I expected the reverse. But of course once

you get the  results, then you do an after-the-fact explanation.

"And video games demand a lot  of imagination, a lot of thinking about the unexpected —

or being able  to anticipate the less-probable response. People who can do those sorts

of things tend to be more creative."

The work of Jackson and her  colleagues is part of a growing body of new research that

collectively  calls into question the conventional wisdom that too many video games  inflict

significant harm on children and families.

A shifting landscape

For Wall Street Journal  science writer Richard Lee Hotz, the shift in thinking on video games

really took hold when he came across Jackson's research late last year.  Hotz, twice a

Pulitzer Prize finalist and a past president of the  National Association of Science Writers,

has covered science and  technology at major newspapers for more than 30 years. He had

grown  accustomed to seeing study after study about the perils of video games —  research

that often involved a small number of participants or received  funding from third parties looking

for specific results to advance  their narrative.

"Since video games were first  introduced," Hotz said, "we've been inundated with research papers

that  have suggested strongly that these games are very bad for people. … The  studies were very,

very small, and involved only a handful of people.

"Recently, there's been a  series of thoughtful papers by researchers who have no particular

connection to the gaming interest and no particular interest in it, that  has pointed out how half-baked

a lot of this research has been."

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