Obama: Console era a concern for education

US President Barrack Obama has told a group of university students that the current era of Xbox, PlayStation and iPod's is not always good for education.

Speaking during a commencement speech at Hampton University, Virginia, the president said:

"With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

The president also went on to stress the importance of a good education to enable students to adapt to "a period of breathtaking change."

It's not the first time the president has spoken out against games. Last year he said in a speech to the American Medical Association that they were a "health concern," adding that we should be "going for a run or hitting the gym, and raising our children to step away from the videogames and spend more time playing outside."