For the past few decades, video games have been blamed for everything from obesity to aggression to flat out violent acts. Although video games can be violent at times, I feel like the stigma is uncalled for.
Video games and their effects, especially on children, has been a hot topic of research throughout the last decade, and some of the findings have been surprising.
Video Games and Children
People rant and rave about the negative effect that video games have on children. Saying that they make children fat and lazy, feed their aggressive tendencies, and make children stupid. However, here are some scientific findings on the subject that go against some of these thoughts:
Last year, the American Psychological Association said that video games—even the violent ones—boost children’s learning, health, and social skills.
In 2006, the Federation of American Scientists conducted an experiment and found that students who participate in video-game related learning activities perform 12 percent better on cognitive tasks when compared to students who don’t play video games.
The Netherlands-based Radboud University Nijmegen found that children who play first-person-shooter video games develop faster and more accurate attention allocation, better visual processing, enhanced mental abilities, and spatial skills comparable to the effects of college-level courses—arguably helping children become progressive intellectuals.
In 2003, University of Rochester conducted an experiment that found first-person-shooter games improve visual attention skills. Players of these games are 30 to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in what is happening around them as well as identifying objects in their peripheral vision and switching attention rapidly between multiple things.
Young children between 3 and 6 years old who play video games have been known to have improved literacy, especially story comprehension and letter recognition.
Children who play Tetris for 30 minutes a day have been found to have a thicker cortex, the part of the brain that processes coordination and visual information, than those who do not play the game.
Not all parents are against video games. In fact, most aren’t.
Surveys have found that 52% of parents believe that video games are an important part of their kid’s lives and 35% of parents play video games with their children weekly.
And for those who think that children are sneaking behind their parent’s back to buy video games, know that 91% of parents are present when video games are being bought or rented.
The truth of the matter is, video games help increase hand-eye coordination as well as critical thinking abilities, contributing skills that are useful and important for the rest of a child’s life
A video game a day keeps the doctor away
In addition to being educational and great for children, there have also been extensive studies that have shown video games to be good for your health. They have been used on multiple occasions to help treat physical and mental conditions.
The University of Tubingen in Germany found that video games help treat ADD and ADHD to the same degree as medications like Ritalin and Adderall may. This is because they increase not only attention span, but IQ.
In 2008, the virtual reality video game Snow World helped a marine who had been severely burned cope with the pain of his injuries. While surgeons operated on him, he participated in a 3D snow ball fight and it helped him deal with the pain. Without the game, he reported being consumed by the pain, thinking about it more that 75% of the time. But with the game, that number went down to less than 25%.
There are also games like SpiderWorld, Dirty Bathroom, and IraqWorld that help people suffering from arachnophobia, OCD, and battlefield PTSD respectively. Action games are also known how to help cure lazy eye and the Wii Fit and Wii Sports have both been used to help treat Parkinson’s disease.
And if something terrible happens that lands you in the hospital, make sure to ask your doctor if he plays video games when he asks if you have any questions, because surgeons that play video games are 27% faster at procedures and make 37% fewer mistakes when compared to those who don’t play games.
Video games also help in the work place
The military has been using video games as a training took since the ’80s, and other companies are beginning to catch on to the trend.
Cold Stone Creamery has a cartoon-like simulation game that can be downloaded where players race against the clock and teaches portion control and customer service. About 30% of workers have downloaded and played the game.
When you really think about it, though, this makes perfect sense. Rather than stressing a new employee that is probably already stressed out by the prospect of a new job, they can play a game that teaches everything that they would learn on the floor.
Video Games and Their Bad Reputation
Video games have received a lot of their bad views because some of the recent mass shootings in Connecticut and Colorado because both of the young men who committed the crimes were avid first-person shooter game players. Although it is tragic, it seems like this is an outlier to the norm. Millions of copies of first-person-shooters are sold every year and there are not millions of shootings.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have also blamed games like Grand Theft Auto for drunk driving and car surfing. However, the CDC conducted a study and found that since 1999 there were less than 100 injuries and about half as many fatalities from car surfing. The deadliest year for carsurfing was in 1999, two years before the release of Grand Theft Auto III the first game that you could car surf in.
Recently Dr. Pfenninger released an article about a study that found that children who play video games are more violent and have less empathy due to their exposure to the violent nature of the games.
However, children and adults alike are exposed to violence in more venues that just video games. The media features grisly murders and rape, along with gang violence and prison shankings for no reason other than to get ratings. I mean, turn on the news and you’re exposed to violence.
There have been times when video games have prevented me from being violent. I have worked in customer service my whole life and people can be aggravating. But instead of getting angry with customers, I save it for later and kill zombies when I get home. Video games can be healthy and outlets for frustration and sources of learning. So I don’t think that video games should be blamed solely for violence, especially when all of the positive aspects of gaming have come to light over the past few years.
