Video Game Summer Camp: Awesome or Awful?

Blue skies and warm temperatures means only one thing: Video game summer camp. The University of British Columbia is offering a week-long summer camp where kids can play video games. Alright, not for the whole day but 3 hours a day.

For $140 CAD, kids will devote time to the Wii, the PlayStation, and assorted video games for a portion of the day. Not to worry, they won’t spend the rest of the day inside. They’ll have the opportunity to play ping pong or foosball and eventually they’ll be booted outside. As a bonus, they’ll be field trips to local video game companies where kids can meet designers and see where the magic happens.

UBC summer camp manager Kyle Cupido says the camp ran last year and is a good fit for kids who might not like the other programs.

“Some kids aren’t athletic, aren’t artistic,” Cupido said. “This gives them a chance to meet new friends.”

Of course there are some who think the idea of the video game summer camp is bad, some of them right on campus. UBC professor of medicine Heather McKay finds the video game camp questionable especially when childhood obesity is on the rise.

“It seems to be going in exactly the wrong direction we want children to be going in the summer months, where they should be engaged in unstructured play, and should be outside and be doing what children of every age should be doing,” said McKay, whose research focuses on children and exercise.

A recent report by Active Healthy Kids Canada found that young people spend six hours in front of screens but only 12 per cent get enough exercise.