Video Game Use and Academic Performance among Primary School Children in Enugu North LGA: Exploring Game Duration, Preferences, Parental Perceptions, and Mediation Strategies

Video game use among children has become a prominent aspect of contemporarychildhood, raising questions about its influence on academic performance. This studyexamined the relationship between video game use and children's academicperformance in Enugu North LGA, Enugu State. It also assessed video gamepreferences, parental perception of video games, and mediation strategies. Adescriptive cross-sectional survey design was used. Data were collected using astructured questionnaire from 380 randomly selected primary school children agedseven and above. Data were analysed using SPSS version 23.0. Descriptive statisticsand chi-square tests were applied at a 0.05 significance level, and a decisionbenchmark of 2.5 was used to interpret mean scores. Findings show that childrenmostly played puzzle and adventure games, and over 50% played video games forover 5 hours daily. Despite this, 53.2% of children showed high academic performance.Parental perception was generally sceptical, though some acknowledged theeducational potential of video games. Strategies adopted by parents included settingtime limits, imposing rules, and providing study-focused environments. The resultsrevealed no significant relationship between game duration and academicperformance (p > 0.05). However, findings suggest that when properly guided andused in moderation, video games can positively impact learning. It was thereforerecommended that balancing screen time with academics, promoting educationalgames, and encouraging parental engagement will help to harness the potential ofvideo games in improving children's cognitive and academic abilities.