Can gaming be beneficial?
People are often worried about the effect of video games on children’s health and wellbeing. Today, we give an overview of the largest study to date on gaming that was just published a couple of days ago. Maybe video games are not all bad?
Here are the key takeaways from the study that involved more than 2200 kids mainly around 10 years old:
Researchers separated those more than 2200 kids into two groups - those not playing at all versus those playing 3 or more hours per day. Three hours a day is a lot, don’t you agree? But this threshold was specifically selected because it is way above the recommended video gaming time by the American Academy of Pediatrics. So it must have negative consequences?
What researchers found is actually quite the opposite! They realized that kids engaged in video gaming perform better when it comes to cognitive tasks! They are faster and more accurate (the tests involved impulse control and working memory tasks). They even showed more brain activity in frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks. But also less activity in visual areas and they discuss that the brain might become more efficient at visual processing as a result of repeated practice through gaming. Fascinating for sure!
You might not be convinced about these findings and still be concerned about the negative impact of gaming on children’s mental health. Indeed, these findings are all about cognitive performance but not about mental health issues. But don’t think that these scientists didn’t look at mental health problems. They did! They used CBCL (mental health symptoms are commonly evaluated using the Child Behavior Checklist) and here is what they found: the study revealed that mental health and behavioral scores from the CBCL were not significantly different between those kids who played video games more than three hours per day and those who are not engaged in gaming at all. However, the study showed that children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day did tend to report higher mental health and behavioral issues compared to children who played no video games. Even though these findings were not statistically significant, it’s definitely worth addressing…
Which is exactly what we do at Triumf Health! We deliver mental health support to kids through a game environment. So we combine the best of both worlds - cognitive benefits of gaming with teaching the necessary skills to build resilience. Cognitive performance + mental health = Triumf!
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