The Role of Video Games in the Social Behavior of Children from the 5th to the 8th Grade of Elementary School

U ovom radu obrađeno je pitanje uloge videoigara u socijalnom ponašanju djece od 5. do 8. razreda osnovne škole. Za potrebe rada proveden je anketni upitnik u dvije hrvatske osnovne škole, a tema upitnika bila je uloga videoigara u životu djece osnovnoškolske dobi, gdje su učenici samostalno odgovorili na pitanja postavljena u upitniku. Pitanja su bila vezana uz njihovu učestalost igranja videoigara, kao i uz njihove preferencije prema žanrovima videoigara. Drugi dio upitnika bio je vezan uz njihove socijalne značajke i slobodno vrijeme, gdje su odgovarali na pitanja koja se odnose na teme razgovora s prijateljima, načine provođenja slobodnog vremena te broj dobrih prijatelja. Rezultati istraživanja pokazali su da ne postoji bilo kakav pozitivan ili negativan utjecaj videoigara na socijalno ponašanje djece. Djeca koja su češće igrala videoigre nisu imala ni manje niti više dobrih prijatelja nego djeca koja ne igraju videoigre ili djeca koja manje igraju videoigre. Ujedno nije pronađena ni povezanost između igranja umreženih igara i povećanog broja dobrih prijatelja ili većeg broja sklapanja novih prijateljstava pomoću videoigara.This paper discusses the role of video games in the social behavior of children from 5th to 8th grade of elementary school. For the purpose of the paper, we have conducted a survey questionnaire in two Croatian elementary schools. The topic of the questionnaire was the role of video games in the life of elementary school children, where they solely answered the questions posed in the questionnaire. The questions were related to their frequency of video game play, as well as their preferences to video game genres. The second part of the questionnaire was related to their social characteristics and leisure time, where they answered questions related to the topics of conversation with friends, ways of spending free time and the amount of good friends. Research results have shown that there is no positive or negative role of video games on the child's social behavior. Children who played video games more often did not have fewer or more good friends than children who did not play video games or children who played less often video games. At the same time, no correlation was found between playing online multiplayer games and increased number of good friends or greater number of new friendships made by playing video games