Teens, Video Games and Civics

I don't feel that this study presented any new or eye-opening information to me that I haven't seen or head before. Teen gaming has been a hot topic for at least a decade and there aren't may aspects of this issue that have yet to be explored and this article fell flat with me. I don't feel like I learned anything by reading it. I'm not sure the link/relevance between gaming and civic commitments either; the article didn't explain why this information needed to be gathered and why it is important.

Open-ended questions in response to the article http://pewresearch.org/pubs/953/teens-video-games-and-civics

1. "The report...is based on a national, random digit dial telephone survey of 1102 parent-teen pairs. The teens we interviewed were ages 12 to 17." This is a relatively small sample size considering there are 25-28 millions teens in the united states according to the 2000 United States census. The researchers also limited their sample to people who have land lines. How can the researchers confidently report their findings when it isn't an accurate snapshot of the American teenage/parents pair population?

2. What is this study trying to get the reader to think about? Why and why is this study relevant to people in the field of education?

3. Is using methods of gaming to reach kids educationally crossing the line? There are educational games out there, but they aren't designed to be used by the school system. How are educational games different that games used by schools to teach students?

4. What do the researchers want the reader to take away from this information? The information presented doesn't seem to be important or shocking enough to make a call for action.

5. The article stated "this is the first large-scale study to examine the relationship between specific gaming experiences and teens' civic activities and commitments," but they seemed to focus more on the gaming aspect and never really focused what they meant by or what they found out about the 'civic activities and commitments." They didn't interview people old enough to vote so how do they expect kids to have a real understanding of these civic commitments?