VIDEO GAMES: Research shows that games which get kids off the couch may score big for their health.
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Kids today don't spend enough time playing video games—at least, not the kinds that get them off the sofa. Several recent studies have found that playing active video games such as Dance Dance Revolution keeps the pounds off and improves fitness levels. As researchers continue to quantify the physical benefits, manufacturers plan to capitalize on the results, not only by releasing new titles and systems, but also by installing them in schools and pitching them to pediatricians in hopes that they will urge patients to use them.

Over the years, investigators have accumulated evidence that some traditional video games can sharpen the mind. Just last December, a study in Psychology and Aging found that playing strategy-type video games can help older people retain certain cognitive skills that tend to decline with age, such as reasoning and switching between tasks.

But more recently, studies exploring the effects of games that require players to do more than sit in one place have revealed how the diversions can improve the body. Among the latest work to connect weight loss in kids with video entertainment comes from Robin Mellecker and Alison McManus of the University of Hong Kong. In the September 2008 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, they report that elementary school children who played video games for 35 minutes a day could burn around 150 calories, enough to prevent weight gain in an average-weight child. The discovery echoes similar findings published in Pediatrics in December 2006, which found that super active video games can work as well as traditional play time in terms of energy expenditure.

The Hong Kong study used a game system relatively unknown in the U.S. but popular in Asia, called XaviX. McManus says that she and Mellecker chose XaviX, made by SSD Co., Ltd., of Japan, "because it is much cheaper than any of the other alternatives." In the most active game, J-Mat Jackie's Action Run, players run or walk on a special mat that represents the streets of Hong Kong, "occasionally dodging barriers in the road by sidestepping, squatting, jumping, and stamping out the virtual ninjas," Mellecker and McManus wrote in their study.

Other researchers have looked at active games popular in the U.S., too, and drawn similar conclusions about their physical benefits. The systems include Dance Dance Revolution, which requires players to step on sections of a pressure-sensitive mat as ordered by arrows on a screen, and Nintendo's Wii and Wii Fit, in which players can try their skill at simulated bowling, tennis and other sports and exercises.

Despite the results, not every parent or pediatrician thinks encouraging active video games is a great idea. "Once you say to a child, 'We really want you to play these video games,' will they then become more enamored with entertainment games?" including ordinary passive ones, asks Donald Schifrin, a Seattle pediatrician who is also vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee that deals with media and children's health. He worries about a child saying, "My parents told me that a gaming system is good for me."

Peter Newman, general manager of XaviX's manufacturer SSD, insists that his company is sensitive to that concern. Real sports should come first, he says. "But when it's minus 40 in Minneapolis or over 110 in Phoenix, you can still stay active" by playing XaviX, he says. He also advocates the video games for "kids who are not athletic—kids who were last to get dressed for PE."