{"id":5198,"date":"2026-06-13T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T15:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewendymethod.com\/should-kids-play-wordle\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T16:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T13:54:51","slug":"should-kids-play-wordle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellnessfirst365.com\/?p=5198","title":{"rendered":"Should kids play Wordle?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
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Illustration by Liz Zonarich\/Harvard Staff\n<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\n\t\tShould kids play Wordle?\t<\/h1>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\tEarly childhood development expert has news for parents who think the popular online game will turn their children into super readers\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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\n\t\t\t\tA series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Millions of people play <\/em>Wordle<\/em><\/a>, the popular online game in which players must guess a five-letter word in six tries. We asked researcher <\/em>Nadine Gaab<\/em><\/a>, associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, about the game\u2019s possible benefits on young people\u2019s brains. Gaab\u2019s work is at the intersection of developmental psychology, learning sciences, and cognitive neuroscience.<\/em><\/p>\n

People wonder if Wordle makes young people or adults smarter, but I don\u2019t think playing the game has much to do with your general cognitive abilities. If you\u2019re good at it, it may be because of your reading abilities, spelling abilities, recognizing spelling patterns, and memorizing word combinations. But what I can tell you is pure speculation because to my knowledge no one has looked at this. There are many literacy games such as Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and so on, that can be beneficial for both children and adults in general. For young children, it\u2019s good to engage them with letters and letter combinations, or anything that\u2019s related to reading, the earlier the better. <\/p>\n

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“For young children, it\u2019s good to engage them with letters and letter combinations, or anything that\u2019s related to reading, the earlier the better.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

I have three young children, and at least one of them is really into Wordle. I play it, too. People like it because it\u2019s satisfying and gives you fast feedback. If you\u2019re drawn to play these kinds of games and you have fun doing it, it\u2019s fine as long as you\u2019re not spending hours a day doing it and neglecting other aspects of your life. Overall, educational games are a good way of engaging a child\u2019s attention and having positive emotions while adding educational value. Any extracurricular engagement \u2014 sports, recreational games, chess, reading books, etc. \u2014 has been shown to be beneficial for the overall development of a child. There have been studies looking at the impact of martial arts, chess, or physical activity on kids, and the research didn\u2019t find that one activity is better than others. If a child is positively engaged, and the activity has a social component and evokes positive emotions, it\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

In general, the brain gets activated from playing all types of games. It all depends on the nature of the game more than whether it\u2019s online or on a board. When we play Wordle, we can speculate that at least the four key areas in the brain that are involved in reading get activated. All these areas are in the brain\u2019s left hemisphere; one is the visual word form area, which French scholar Stanislas Dehaene calls the brain\u2019s letterbox. This area, located in the back part of the brain in the left hemisphere, is probably engaged when people are playing Wordle because you see letters and you recognize words. Other areas that get activated are the oral language areas and the higher order areas of the brain (especially the inferior frontal lobe) often nicknamed the CEO of the reading brain, which helps with integrating everything into a bigger picture by making sense of things you read or hear. I would hypothesize that probably all these areas are somewhat involved in playing Wordle, but to be honest, I don\u2019t think that this will be much different from any other letter game, or any other letter activity kids do in a kindergarten classroom or second-grade classroom. Those activities have reading, oral language, and memory components, and they also have what we call orthographic mapping because if you\u2019re guessing words, you must retrieve words that fit a combination. People who are good spellers and have both good orthographic mapping and spelling abilities are probably better at the game than people whose skills are not as pronounced as others.<\/p>\n

I would say that playing Wordle or any word game is good, but it doesn\u2019t mean that if you play word games at home and you read every day that will automatically lead [your child] to be a superior reader or prevent reading disabilities. Learning to read requires several skills and develops over a very long period. A study<\/a> we did in my lab<\/a> shows that brain areas foundational for both language and reading development start developing as early as in utero. The quality of early education also plays a role. Wordle can be one of many of activities you play with your kids, but parents shouldn\u2019t think it\u2019s going to turn their kids into superior readers. My recommendation is to read to your child every day and start playing fun letter games early on. Our lab did several studies showing that home literacy is correlated with brain development, especially for the reading-related areas. <\/p>\n

We often forget the mental health component of early childhood. It\u2019s good to remember that if a child is happy and engaged in doing something that has educational value, the best thing is to let them do what they\u2019re doing. If every morning you pull your child away from their wonderful outside play or whatever activity they\u2019re engaged in, and say, \u201cWe have to do the word of the day because it\u2019s good for your brain development or your reading development,\u201d that is a mistake. Games are beneficial, especially if kids don\u2019t see them as a chore. <\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Liz Mineo, Harvard Staff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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