Watch out, television: Video games are homing in on your play time. Since video games were introduced in the 1970s, they have become increasingly popular among kids of every age.

A 1994 study reported in the Educational Resources Information Center Center's ERIC Digest online finds that 65 percent of males and 57 percent of females in Grades 7 and 8 played from one to six hours of video games at home per week. Likewise, a 1998 study found that 90 percent of fourth-graders played video games at least one hour per week.

This new pastime can have both good and bad effects on kids' social lives. Y-Press recently interviewed four youths from St. Jude School -- fifth-graders Eamon Roach, Luke Allard and Chris Mislan and eighth-grader Jessica Davey -- about the effects of video games on their friends and family.

Among the kids' favorite games are Ape Escape, Sonic Adventures, Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown, Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and 1080 Snowboarding.

Video games that appeal to them are ones with vivid graphics, challenges, adventure and, of course, fun.

"I just like to have fun. I like a game that would make me feel good, that I accomplish something," said Chris.

"I like Zelda. It has puzzles in it, but they're not too hard, and it has a lot of adventure in it and sword fighting, and you find different weapons," said Eamon.

Besides fun, there are other benefits to video games.

"You can develop eye-hand coordination," Eamon said.

"It kind of teaches you determination," Jessica said.

Video games also can teach teamwork.

"My brother and I, we've (won) a few games by going together. But on PlayStation or Nintendo, you can't work with somebody," Luke said.

He added that video games can cause division, too.

"My brother and I argue a lot more than we used to because we're always wanting to play one-player games," he said.

One of the main drawbacks of video games is addiction to them. All of the interviewees agreed that this can be a problem, but the answer to breaking it is not simply putting the controller down.

"You have to have somebody come in and pull you off of it," Jessica said.

Chris admitted that he stopped when his time limit came only because he knew what would happen if he didn't.

"It's hard to stop when you're doing really well, but usually if my mom gets really mad, then I'll stop because I know the consequences," he said.

Like other kinds of addiction, video-game addiction can lead to alienation from friends and family.

"If you play more video games, then you wouldn't have time to spend with your family and friends," Chris said.

Luke remembers standing by while one of his friends played video games. "It didn't make me feel very good because I wanted to play with him, not watch him play this video game," he said.

"Friends are more important than games."

The interviewees agreed that it's necessary to have a balance between time spent playing video games and time spent socializing with peers and family members.

Logically, a simple solution would be to play video games with other people. After all, what good is it to succeed if no one is there to witness it?

"I always do better with somebody helping, with someone on my side," Eamon said. "Maybe something funny happens, and you'll have nobody there to laugh with."

But there's a catch: Some of the games are one-player games.

"I'll ask before I start playing, and I'll see if anybody else wants to play with me. But if somebody asks to join when I'm really far along, I would probably want to play by myself," Luke said.

In this case, the player is forced to choose between playing the game or playing with his or her friend. The choice should be easy to make.

"If you have a friend and you're playing video games all the time, then you would probably lose your friend because they would think that you're just trying to play by yourself and not with them," Chris explained.

But video games sometimes can bring people together, if everybody enjoys playing them.

"It could be a family game," Jessica said. "My dad plays with us every once in a while, and he still gets enjoyment out of it."

All interviewees, however, prefer hanging out with friends to playing video games.

"I would rather play with my friends because on a video game, there's only one certain thing you can do. But with a friend, you could start one thing and go on to another, like play basketball and then play football," Luke said.

"I would choose my friend because (with) friends, you can actually have conversations and do different things, and they'll probably last longer than video games would in entertaining you," Jessica added.

REPORTERS: Tony Sahm, 11, and Al Cook, 11.