According to Research Gaming Can Be Good For You.
Gaming has gathered a lot of criticism over the last decades. Many people believe that it does more harm than good and that it is ruining our society and children, in particular. Its bad reputation has prevented some parents from buying their children games in fear that they induce violence and negative behaviours and harm your eyes and your brain.
However, according to recent research, gaming has many positives aspects and can be good for you and your family. As long as you can control the types of games that you play and the amount of time you spend playing them, you can gain a lot of new skills and improve your already-existing ones.
With the growth of the gaming industry, many researchers have focused their studies on gaming and its effects on the body and brain. A multitude of recent studies have in fact proved that gaming is improving your life. It has both physical and psychological benefits which have an overwhelmingly positive effect on your life. Who wouldn’t want to better themselves, right?
A study by Simone Kühn et al found that playing Super Mario actually changed the structure of the brain’s gray matter and improved the participants’ ability for spatial navigation and strategic planning. It also enhanced their working memories and motor performance.
Bejjanki et al’s 2014 study proved that action games (which have overwhelmingly negative reputations in the media and among parents) indeed improve perception and enhance cognition and attention. So games don’t always melt your brain or make you violent.
Just thinking about its positives, you can see how it can also help to prolong life and decrease loneliness. Imagine the possible benefits of older people getting up and playing the more physical games on the Kinect or VR or even communicating with others in online play modes.
So, research proves that gaming can be good. But what do actual parents and gamers have to say?
I was fortunate enough to attend Geek festival in Margate this February and found that the gaming community is very enthusiastic and extremely positive.
Amongst the many young children gaming there was a multitude of parents looking on. I asked a couple of them for their opinions about gaming and the effect it has on their families. Here are some responses to the questions I asked:
What do you think about the negative reputation that gaming has accumulated?
I think that a lot of people pass judgement on gaming without having done their research. I know lots of other mums who forbid their children from playing because of what they heard through word-of-mouth. I think they need to get online and discover some of the benefits there are to gaming.
Do you think gaming has positive aspects?
100%! I find that when I allow my children to play games they learn to collaborate together, they argue less and improve their hand-eye coordination.
Do you often get involved in the games with your children?
As a parent, I think you have to keep an eye on the things your children do online and the kinds of games they play. I personally get involved in some of their games because it allows me to improve my communication with my children. Before, I found that they would discuss the games amongst themselves and I had no idea what they were talking about. Since getting involved in gaming with my children we speak more, and I have more knowledge of their lives since gaming is such a huge part of it.
These parents have expressed their opinions which seem overly positive. Walking around the festival I found myself marvelling at the massive sense of community amongst these gamers and I witnessed many people making new friends, bonding with their families and having fun!
What is more, parents in particular could connect with other parents and discussing their children’s gaming habits and favourite games. I also saw many trying them out for themselves and attempting to play and teach their children how to play all of the old-school games Geek had to offer.
Another thing I noticed was the huge number of females (both older and young girls) who were actively getting involved in gaming and enjoying the event. Actually, recent research has also shown that the number of female gamers increases each year. In 2017, 41% of gamers were female. So not only can games be good for your health, they can help destroy the stereotype of the sweaty teenage gamer.
Thus, it seems important that we listen to the research and do some googling ourselves in order to discover what science has actually proved. With how crushingly negative the general opinion about gaming seems to be, I think that some of the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.
Research has been wrong about many things before, take the earth is flat theory which had been disproved many years ago, yet it has gained many supporters recently (whether they genuinely believe it or not). Research and science is not definite, we as humans can make up our own minds about what is good and what is bad for us.
