Is it Really Beneficial to Play Video Games?

More than 150 million Americans are playing any form of video games, according to The Entertainment Software Association’s 2018 study. Apparently, 64% of the American household has at least one person who plays video games on a regular basis.

This just says how much video games have become a part of the everyday lives of different households or people. Almost gone are the days when people would think that playing any video game is a bad habit.

It’s still true that playing too much video games can still be harmful to your health. This is only if the player has become too addicted to stop playing. Just like how a man in Taiwan took his video game addiction to an extreme level. He played League of Legends for 23 hours straight and suffered from a heart condition and fatigue. He was found dead because of this.

While addiction to playing video games can be scary, there still are scientifically proven reasons as to why this is actually found beneficial. In this article, we’ll let you know why video games can be beneficial rather than detrimental.

Playing video games can improve your problem-solving skills

Psychologists say that playing video games is a form of going through deep practice. Deep practice can allow you to focus on a task and let your mind focus on fulfilling it. When this is the case, it’s more likely that you find different ways to achieve your short-term goal and learn how to do a specific task more quickly.

Just think of you need to focus on your driving lessons. You are so focused on what you’re doing that it only takes a few sessions for you to learn how to drive. The same logic applies to how simulations help different professionals like pilots to learn what they need.

Playing video games can make you a better visual learner

A lot of video games require their players to be visually sharp when it comes to finding clues or objects they need to push through in a game. This helps sharpen the visual skills of the player, and aside from that, becoming a visual learner is what a lot of video games also teach their players.

Some games would need to show a player how something is done before the player gets to do it himself. This improves the visual processing skills of the players. What’s even better is that this positive effect of playing video games are known to last for a long time if not permanently.

Playing video games improves your creativity

Any video games allow you to experience different things and some of these can improve your creativity. A research led by the Michigan State University found that children who play video games are more creative than non-gamers.

This could still be caused by deep practice. Any players are more likely to finish a task by being creative when it comes to solution. However, it’s still important to note that just the excessive use of computers or mobile phones alone won’t improve anything in your brain.

Gaming can keep your mind active

Having an active brain is important to help you avoid early mental and physical decline. Inactivity can cause this to happen and playing any games could help your brain continue to function. What you need to do is look for games that would help you continuously think.

The best browser games or even any games at all should allow you to experience different problem-solving scenarios that could allow you to think critically. You can even choose multi-player games to keep your social skills intact.

What you should know is that you should avoid inactiveness altogether. Making sure that your mind is always busy can help you avoid psychological problems like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Gaming could help become better at multi-tasking

Since it’s already a known fact that playing video games can improve your cognitive learning and thinking skills, it’s just easy to assume that it can also help you be better at multi-tasking. In fact, it should not be an assumption anymore as research can prove that this is the case.

The speed of action when playing video games can allow you to think and process things quickly. A study by Nature in 2013 actually showed that the improvement that playing a video game could give with regard to multi-tasking can even last up to 6 months. They even found that people in their 70s can even be trained to multi-task better by playing a simple 3D racing game.

Definitely, any addiction can only be bad for anybody, and this includes video game addiction. However, if you just focus on how video games can actually help your brain function better, you’ll most likely just reap more benefits. Just make sure that you still also maintain an active lifestyle to also be physically fit to perform any tasks.