some anecdotal evidence: as a child i was extremely easy to agitate, had very low impulse control and was very violent in general. when i got my first own computer, i started playing the most violent games i could get my hands on, without the knowledge of my parents of course. and over about half a year, i became calmer and calmer. it was extremely helpful to have a dedicated place where i could vent all the frustration that had built up over time, without facing any real world consequences. over time, i was less on edge in general, but even when i was faced with a very frustrating situation, i knew that i could suck it up long enough until i get home to play some doom or whatever. and when i was very much on edge and started a play session, i noticed that i make more mistakes and play very far from optimal, when im agitated. this helped me to realize that i can make way better decisions in life when i stay calm and collected. this sounds a bit like captain obvious now, but as a child, this was a new and important insight to me. also, over a longer period of time, i learned how to better take calculated risks, like formulating game strategies with low risk of catastrophic failure but high reward in learning and/or performance. basically i learned how to do behavioral experiments while keeping the impact to my surroundings to a minimum. i was then able to transfer that to my social life and found that i could make friends with people i was usually too shy to even look at. games helped me to build the self-esteem that i lacked for such a long time and helped me to build an understanding of how to efficiently acquire new skills that previously felt completely out of reach. so for me personally, video games were an extremely helpful tool that changed my life for the better in so many ways :)
The first time my car slid out in the rain my body knew what to do before my brain had time to react thanks to too many hours and dollars in high school playing initial d. I called my mum as soon as I got home to tell her video games were worth it after all
Thanks for the science based healthcare reporting. Great to have a reliable source. In a host of ways it makes sense video games have benefits. Most people do the same things daily or weekly. drive the same places, sit in the same rooms, and discuss the same topics. In video games people travel new areas, with new physics, and containing new people and characters. Addiction can be a problem. Vision problems seem like it might be a another problem, but in terms of cognitive exercise its better than a lot of things we do. Things like reading probably provide for some similar types of mental exercise without the high levels of problem solving. Would be nice if video game designers were more focused on making games fun and healthy rather than as addictive and economically manipulative as possible.
Hello Aaron. Regarding what was mentioned at 3:48 about the brain activity between groups having been there before they started playing video games. Do you agree that having participants execute the tasks in the beginning and at the end of the trial period and comparing how well they did at both marks would have been an effective way of addressing this?
There are so many ways to track video game playing. Switch records that information passively (to an extent). The missed opportunity to capture that data is disappointing. While case control studies are not the peak, Japan and US populations have access to similar genres of games, but the crime rate in Japan is significantly less.
While I'd like to think that gaming is good (so long as it doesn't take over one's life) and do not doubt that there can be benefits in at least some cases (makes sense that the skills needed in the games one plays would improve because of practising them) I figure that on the whole it probably evens out to be no better or worse than other sedentary hobbies.
My friends and I spent a LOT of time as kids growing up playing various first person shooters. I'm a pacifist and my best friend who is now a father with a young son would most likely only pick up a weapon if you were dumb enough to threaten his kid. Can video games desensitize you? Yeah, but so does all media, which I'd argue is DEEPLY problematic. Does it actively make you more violent? Nope.
Dr. Carroll uses the term “cross-sectional study”, which for those who don’t know, a cross-sectional study is a study that collects data from a large and diverse group of people at a single point in time. Dr. Carroll goes on to say that a cross-sectional study shows a relationship between two things (in this case, between video games and cognitive ability. What Dr. Carroll is referring to, but did not thoroughly explain, is Correlation Vs. Causation. Because of the study design of a cross-sectional study only gathering data on a single point in time rather than over time, we are not able to prove that video games “cause” children to have better cognitive function. We are only able to say that video games may have a relationship or correlation with better cognitive function in children. Furthermore, we cannot truly say that the video games and better cognitive function in children even have a relationship or correlation between the two. The better cognitive function could be caused by any number of factors, some of those factors completely unrelated to the video games. Therefore, the better cognitive function and the use of video games at that point of time may be completely incidental. Even if there are multiple studies done with similar outcomes, there is no way to get rid of extraneous factors that may potentially influence the better cognitive function. Ultimately, there is no way to prove a relationship or correlation between the video games and the better cognitive function in children, let alone prove causation.
In my opinion video games are fine as long as it's 4 hours a day for days when you have other things to do and then perhaps if it's winter and you have less things to do you can play longer, strictly restricting video games as a parent is extremely damaging however there should be limitations and a guided routine should be set. Video game addiction is a real problem and is caused by boredom, anxiety, ECT ECT it's an escape mechanism, however many people ignore this and just blame the individual especially parents to kid interactions. Focus on the causation and not the outcome.
The tasks given are also really important. If you take a group of kids who play tetris 10 hours a day and a group that has never even heard of it, and then you give these kids a job with stacking shapes of course the tetris kids are going to crush it. If you give them a task more related to the outdoors then I bet the non-tetris kids will win because that's more their area. The same problem happens with IQ tests. IQ tests test how well you can do on an IQ test and nothing else. You could have some genius AMD engineer who designs amazing adding logic but fails at knowing if jim is related to susan because they don't use that skill.
I grew up gaming and the only downside I could say was staying up until midnight it was hard to get my eyes to stop fluttering around when I was trying to go to sleep. That's how I knew I overdid it lol. Otherwise, it always felt like it got hot in the room when I was really pushing it in a competitive game and I assumed it was from brain activity being so high.
Throughout human history kids played together, ran around, and were generally ignored by the adults. It's only been since people settled in one place and started farming that the kids were pushed into working hard. And then with the development of schooling over the last couple of hundred years kids were forced into sitting still for hour after hour to "learn" and to be prepared for a life of working for someone else for a living. I see video games as much closer to what children's brains have evolved to expect so it would seem plausible that it would actually benefit kids a great deal compared with the alternatives.
games are trade-offs. think about it. games are effectively logical puzzles... especially puzzle or memory games. so they would increase that area because of the cognitive workload associated with it. though with video-games there is also the authors viewpoint that is also being placed in there causing a possibility where players could either be influenced or not. then there is also the fact also stated where people who game are already good and find cognitive challenges stimulating. who knows? but one thing is for certain games have viewpoints and they have challenges... what's the difference between chess and virtual chess? Hope you have a great day & Safe Travels!
Now how to make sure it isn't just that nerds tend to be drawn to video games. NERDS! Wedgie time. Jk, I play tons of video games. I would also argue that I classify as a nerd.
I would argue for strong correlation between intelligence and desire to play video games. My kids measure in the highly gifted range. (The one who has been tested has an IQ of 150+.) Video games are one of the few play environments where they can really test their mental skills. Obviously, it's still important to get in other play aspects like physical activity and socializing (though my kids do a lot of co-op video games with each other, especially after I read about all the benefits of couch co-op in Jane McGonigal's book). But overall video games really appeal to smart kids. And I'm not sure how you could control that in a study.
For my background, I have an MA in positive developmental psychology and evaluation. I am also bias in favor of playing videogames because I love videogames. Author and researcher Jane Mcgonigal has written several books about the cognitive and developmental benefits of games, and even developed a mental health app she created to help her recover from a traumatic brain injury. She also sites research showing games are as effective as SSRIs in treating depression in some clinical populations. Even on a basic level, games are interactive art. I probably wouldn't read Sappho's poetry about having sex with her girlfriend even though she's perhaps THE best poet ever to exist (fight me). And I wouldn't want a 9 year old to play Grand Theft Auto. Saying the content we consume should be age appropriate doesn't mean it shouldn't exist at all.
"Games are not the same" is an understatement. Flappy birds or candy crush are not 4x strategy or twitch shooters. Someone who actually plays real games, someday, will be involved in a gaming related study, and get useful information from it, I hope.
Just speaking from my experience (which I know is not scientific), I feel like video games have had some long-term benefits in helping with certain things including critical thinking or even money management. However as a parent (and also being honest about myself), I can see how in the short term they can induce some fairly negative behaviour. They are compulsive (which is not the same as addictive but it's close) and they can hook people into sitting on the sofa playing them for hours on end, and also spending a lot of time on games rather than other more beneficial tasks or activities. Also much like watching a lot of TV, it can make kids quite listless and grumpy. So I understand how parents (especially those who are not gamers themselves and so only have an outside perspective on it) would see them as a negative influence on their kids, even if it may be more complex in the wider sense.
My personal experience is that it makes you lazy and messes up your expectations of the amount of effort it takes to accomplish anything. If you can get your dopamine hits by only moving your thumbs sitting in a recliner it makes it a lot harder to justify getting up and jogging to get a similar immediate reward.
Games are good for everyone. Playing video games result in improved focus, reaction, and congnition. We have to make strategies and carry out the plan to achieve goals. Now stop whining.
Always disliked these kinda studies because they seek to quantify something objectively 'benefiting' or 'hurting' about hobbies. At least of those on the side of trying to attack certain hobbies it raises questions about their own values and power position in society. There's a serious danger of this kind of question and topic being used by those with power to specifically target marginalized groups in society as it's incredibly subjective. Obviously white male gamers aren't marginalized but these kinds of studies raise serious ethical concerns because of potential abuse of power. Especially when studies are often led and directed by white males too.
They should follow people that actually play hard game vs. easy game. I'm pretty sure that where the silver lining is. For example, people that play Starcraft vs. people that play candy crush. It like anything else you are made up of what you put into yourself. Whatever it is food or info input.
