Sudoku and Children- is it a Healthy Obsession?

It is the game played round the world. To play this game based on logical reasoning a person has to have patience and use concentration. Sudoku is one of those games, much like “brain teasers” that tend to capture a person’s attention and then hold it until the player is finished with the round. It becomes a personal challenge. The world wide game has gotten the attention of adults and children alike testing their powers of concentration and their skills in a game where math is an illusion almost to the point, for some, of obsession.

In Japan there have been reports of school aged children playing the game during class and college aged students sitting in quads with their faces buried in a note pad. There are teachers who have complained about students playing Sudoku in class during lectures or at a point when they should have been taking notes. The same reports have surfaced in Great Britain and France. These reports are prompting adults to ask, is it a safe obsession?

Creators of the many websites dedicated to the game suggest that Sudoku is an excellent way for kids to develop their logic skills while having fun. They children as young as seven or eight work these puzzles at this point. Most people say that no math know-how is needed to complete the puzzles. This, of course, has been hotly debated over the past several years.

Psychologists now warn, however, that an obsessive game such as Sudoku teaches children to live with stress. They conclude that when children play the game at first it is for fun but then the competitive nature takes over and the challenge to “beat” the game becomes an obsession. In one case in Japan a child was rumored to have become so obsessed that he had to be hospitalized for exhaustion.

Supporters of the game still contend that it is more than okay for children to play. They counter that it gives children a fun introduction to numbers and teaches them to think logically. Unfortunately, it is still too early in the games history to tell if it will have any counter effects on children who are playing it a lot. It took years before people realized the potential dangers of video games and there is the possibility that with Sudoku, if there are any dangers, it may prove to take some time to discover as well. Time will be the only test.