How Video Games Help You
Video games are engaging, challenging, and fun. They transport you to an entirely new world and present unique challenges that help strengthen your brain and force it to learn and adapt.
Yes, you read that right! Video games are good for you, and scientific research confirms it.
Many people think that video games make you more violent, hinder your ability to learn, and even affect your health. But you have to keep in mind that anything in excess can be harmful.
Video games have amazing benefits for both your brain and your body. But that doesn’t justify playing video games all day.
Here are the five benefits of playing video games:
- Mental Workout
Hippocampus is a part of our brain that plays a significant role in memory and learning. A 2015 study showed that people who play video games have better hippocampal memory than non-gamers.
Since you need intellectual and motor skills to win, playing video games gives your brain a mental workout.
The study by Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité University Medicine St. Hedwig-Krankenhaus revealed that playing video games increases your brain’s gray matter.
Thus, video games positively impact the regions of your brain responsible for memory, information organization, spatial orientation, and motor skills.
- Better Problem-Solving Skills
Video games teach you various strategies, including resource management and planning. These strategies can be directly applicable to the real-world as well.
Some mission-based and multi-level video games can take several hours to solve. While in other games, you have to strategize quickly as the time is running out. Hence, gamers develop better problem-solving skills.
A study published in 2013 revealed that kids who played strategy-based games showed an improvement in problem-solving skills. That also helped them get better grades in school.
- Improves your Vision
It might be hard to wrap your head around such a fact, but playing video games can improve your vision. A recent study by the University of Rochester proved that gamers are more responsive to different shades of color.
People who play action games have better contrast sensitivity function. It’s an ability that helps you discern between changes in shades of different colors. This is also beneficial when you’re driving at night.
So, as long as you’re not staring at the screen for hours, playing video games can actually enhance your vision.
- Makes you Less Anti-Social
Contrary to popular belief, gamers are not anti-social, shy people who use video games as a way to escape. Instead, gamers form strong friendships compared to non-gamers as they have a matching love of video games.
Another research conducted on children found that kids who played more video games were more likely to have good social skills. Also, those kids performed better academically and built better relationships with other students due to the social and collaborative nature of some types of games.
- Enhances Hand-Eye Coordination and Learning Ability
As per the PLOS One study, people who play video games become better surgeons. The reason is that playing video games improve the hand-eye coordination and precise muscle movement, which are essential skills for their practice.
People who play video games have better cognitive flexibility as these games require constant thinking and user input. So, video games also improve the learning ability.
But the most important thing is to set limits. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends playing video games for 30-60 minutes per day on school days. While, on non-school days, it should be 2 hours or less.