There Are Health Benefits to Gaming and It's Time We Talk About It

Remember when your mom would tell you stop playing so many video games because it's bad for you. Well, what if I were to tell you that she was wrong or mostly wrong. Today we're going to shed light on five ways that gaming can actually be extremely beneficial to your health and cognitive development. Of course there are negatives to playing games all day every day, and we're definitely not insisting that there are only benefits. Remember that anything in excess can be harmful but with that disclaimer out of the way let's sit back and take a look at some positive health effects of gaming.

Eyesight:

Contrary to common belief according to Harvard Health Publishing staring at a screen all day actually does not have a significant negative impact on your vision. Heavy gamers are actually much more attentive to details both in game and then subsequently in real life. Through gaming they develop more sense of spatial awareness and experts have discovered that playing action games in particular improves an ability called contrast sensitivity function. This ability helps us discern between changes and shades of grey against a colored backdrop which is very beneficial while driving at night. Essentially, gamer eyes are more sensitive to slightly different shades of color and have a heightened perception of three-dimensional objects.

Pain Therapy:

It's common to try and distance ourselves from pain by paying attention to something else or focusing on other body mechanisms. That's not the only reason why games are a good post injury prescription. Virtual reality is powerful because it's as if the VR has temporarily inoculated the brain against pain with virtual reality. VR can actually produce a pain killing response in our higher cortical systems by hitting the adrenaline receptors. These benefits are also being studied for mental health improvements specifically in remapping the brain for depression for the optimal benefits. The more immersive the game the better.

Assisting the Treatment:

Video games are being used in healthcare for example to help kids understand what they're going through when they're going through cancer treatments. The game called I Hope lets them visualize how their bodies are fighting the bad cells and that can actually bring about a lot of understanding in what they're going through. There are a number of advances in gaming and VR that treat not only pain but assist in the treatment of many diseases and chronic illnesses. Examples being Autism and Asperger's, Dyslexia, Multiple Sclerosis, and many more. Specifically with Autism and Asperger's experts have seen that using games that incorporate the entire body to control on-screen movements improves the patient's positive interaction with peers and increase in social skills.

Quick Thinking:

You may think the doctors are all work and no play, but researchers found that surgeons who regularly play video games actually make 37% fewer errors and perform their tasks 27% faster than their peers. Essentially action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. Some surgeons develop video game courses to warm up their coordination agility and accuracy before even heading into the operation room. That's a pretty badass aim training regime. Imagine how good surgeons must be at high aim intensive games like Valorant and CS:GO.

Childhood Development:

One of the unique things about video games is it meets students where they are. So when you're playing a game you're playing at the level where you're ready to play, and you're advancing at the pace where you can advance. That means that your education is being customized and your learning is really being maximized. While the historically popular view maintains playing video games are intellectually lazy and a waste of time. We're actually finding that they may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception. Experts say that this is particularly true for FPS games.

It looks like playing video games may boost learning, health and social skills. According to a review of research published by the American Psychological Association video games increase your child's self-confidence and self-esteem. As they master the games the level of difficulty also increases. By constantly practicing and slowly building skills they can become more confident and handle more difficult challenges increasing the difficulty of the game. Since the cost of failure is lower there's less fear making mistakes and they can take more risks and explore more.