Playing video games, according to the American Psychological Association, can help improve learning and boost our social and health skills. As technology advances, game developers keep creating new content for players to try their hands on, and according to research, gaming can help these players develop a certain range of skills which include reasoning, perception, memory, and spatial navigation. Also, taking part in FPS games was found to improve a player’s ability to think about objects in three dimensions as effectively as taking academic courses designed to develop these skills.
Asides from developing these skills, there are other benefits that gaming brings to a person. According to a professional essay writer from CustomWritings, the positive effects of gaming are many, and while many people may say they make you lazy or ruin your social life and your brain, an academic writing expert, Lauren Bradshaw, has researched this topic and from her insight, we can deduce that regular gaming has a social, cognitive, and physical effect on the players.
You may be questioning yourself on why gaming is good for you due to what people are saying, but the next time someone asks you why gaming is good for you, give them these reasons.
Strong Reasons Why Gaming Is Good for You
Socializing and meeting new people
Back in the day, the only way people met and interacted with new people was by writing them letters. Both of you will exchange letters and share personal experiences and all sorts. However, with gaming, you will be able to talk with anyone whether they’re your friend or they’re the people you’re playing against. Though people usually say gaming isolates individuals and takes up their time, the reverse is the case.
Enhances communication
To reiterate the social stats of gaming, players can communicate with friends and other players on game strategy or other topics entirely. When you’re in the middle of the action or planning your next move, Discord lets you talk and text via VoIP in a chat channel.
Additionally, cooperative gaming (also referred to as “co-op gameplay”) lets you and your friends exchange weapons, provide cover and collaborate (hence co-op in the name) during a game, either via text or with headphones and a microphone. That is to say that you and your friends can be at separate locations but communicate smoothly like you’re in the same room.
Develop strategic skills
To people that don’t know what gaming entails, it may look like a childish activity to them. However, your gaming experience proves otherwise. To game successfully requires strategy, coordination, and skills. And you’re required to do this on the spot or pre planned with your team players. So, it’s like a board game, but your enemies are after you in real-time and want to destroy you. By successfully overcoming your enemies, you will learn these skills.
Is Gaming Good for Your Brain?
Build your memory
The many video games available to play require serious concentration and planning. With awesome immersive videos and 3d graphics, the video game atmosphere is rich in stimuli. Exploring and moving around these game virtual worlds helps in building memory retention.
Spending time handling different tasks while moving around a virtual space allows you to massage your hippocampus. This is the area of the brain that converts short-term memory to long-term memory.
When your hippocampus remains in shape, you will see an improvement in your long-term memory, and you’ll become better at moving around the physical space. If you’re prone to getting lost and missing your way, playing video games can help you improve your memory for directions.
Improve spatial visualization
Improve spatial visualizationApart from improving your spatial memory, gaming will help you visualize space properly. According to research, shooting games help individuals improve how they visualize three-dimensional objects. It is easier for gamers to mentally rotate objects to see how they might fit into a space or judge the distance between objects.
The improved visualization offers practical benefits which include organizing your closets, knowing if you can park in parallel spots, and many more. You will also succeed in STEM careers using good spatial visualization.
Perception and vision
The brain creates a template for identifying what’s important and what’s not in a complex environment filled with competing stimuli. This template is what enables an individual to assess and respond to different situations. Playing video games can help improve a person’s ability to create perceptual templates. This perception improvement is highly beneficial because it applies to all situations.
Playing high-action video games also helps improve the ability to different patterns and different shades of gray. Many scientists felt that the ability to differentiate color contrasts was something we could not improve but according to recent research from the University of Rochester, gamers who played over five hours of action games weekly for nine weeks showed an improvement of 43% in contrast sensitivity.
Making decisions
Making decisionsThere are fast-paced video games that are created to make you make quick decisions and stay alert. These energizing actions can enable you to improve your decision-making ability quickly in real life. Making fast decisions in real life is one of the abilities that enable people to thrive, but it can also have serious implications. If you’re facing a dangerous situation in real life, such as someone hitting you on the highway, quick decisions are just as imperative as if you were facing an ambush in a shooter game.
You can also improve your decision-making regarding long-term planning by playing video games. When playing games that require you to strategize, you have to plan and make decisions on the spot that will benefit you down the line. These games enable your brain to understand and recognize the potential implications and outcomes of your decisions. When you get to understand and practice these skills in a virtual world, you’ll be able to apply them in real life.
Solving problems
Solving complex problems is also a challenge in strategic and role-playing video games. Your ability to solve these complex problems will serve as a great practice for real-life challenges. According to the American Psychological Association, children who play strategic video games showed signs of improved problem-solving abilities in school.
The study focused on the correlation between how much time they spent playing games and the improvement they saw, and they found out that the more strategy games the kids played, the more their school grades and problem-solving skills improved.
There is no genre of games that doesn’t involve problem-solving. These problems would require analysis and memorization to solve. So, when you spend time trying to solve problems in video games and failing, the more you try, the more you find solutions to solving that problem in the game and in a real-life situation.
If you have read this piece, you will see that playing video games regularly does better than harming an individual, knowingly or unknowingly. So when someone complains about how regularly you play your games, you have proof to show them why gaming is good for you.
