Search

The proliferation of computer games has primarily drawn the attention of psychologists, who warn of the dangers of game addiction. According to our hypothesis computer games might have several advantages; help and cooperation, communication, provide new information, even support the strategic way of thinking through team games. At the focus of this research is how young people see computer games, what advantages they find in them, how computer games help their approach to sports and how playing these games influences their school results. The research shows that there is no significant gender difference in their use of games, and young people’s school results are not affected even if they play games intensively. Moreover, their free time activities involve regular sports, mostly team sports. These young people see the world in a different way and computer games themselves enrich their everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the processes of role-model selection and opinion formation in secondary school communities, and how these processes differ depending on the reputation of the school. We conducted a Hungarian national survey of students' values and opinion formation methods. We propose that communities in secondary schools with better reputations, which admit higher profile students, do not differ significantly from their counterparts in respect to principles and values. However, the communities of higher profile schools tend to think differently about the values and principles of their collective age group. In particular, the higher status communities tend to think that the rest of their age group disregards the values they hold in higher regard, and form opinions or select role-models according to values which they rate as more blameworthy. We present strong empirical evidence to support this claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]