It was different thirty years ago. Spending time behind screens made people lazy and apathetic. The violent nature of some video games is said to promote aggressiveness. And perhaps the worst: the danger of addiction was so lurking that young people could die from it. In 2005, a South Korean died of a heart attack after 50 hours of non-stop gaming. In 2007, a Chinese man died of cardiac arrest after seven days of gaming. The WHO has declared video game addiction an official disease.
The most recent scientific studies, however, paint a very different picture. We can escape in games, channel negative feelings, learn to react quickly, our neurological connections become more effective, and today we also save the environment with it. In addition, our intelligence increases and children read better and more often.
Recent research has disputed the fact that action games promote or even bring about aggression and other negative feelings. Violent games such as Mortal Combat appear to be even better for the stress experience than puzzle games such as Tetris.
More relaxation and a greater feeling of happiness
The University of North Carolina measured brain activity and hormones after playing puzzle games as well as action games. The subjects were of all ages and of both sexes. The action players showed more relaxation and happiness afterwards than the puzzle players. According to the researchers, this is due to dopamine, a messenger substance in the brain that fuels satisfaction. The dopamine levels of the players who played Tetris did not rise. Those of the players who had played an action game did show a clear increase.
The explanation is sought in the fact that action games involve the player more than puzzle games do. The player has to keep his mind on things, which increases the distraction from daily worries or stress. Contrary to expectations, the violence shown and demanded of the player also seems to contribute to peaceful feelings. This makes it easier for players to get rid of negative emotions. They react in a playful way, without causing real damage to themselves or others. In addition, many action games involve collaborating with other players or in a virtual team. The player’s social behavior results in a higher score and is thus encouraged.
IQ increased by 2.5 points
Neuropsychologists from University College London, together with colleagues from the Swedish Karolinska Institute, showed that boys who played daily games from the age of eleven as adults were 25 percent less likely to experience depressive and suicidal feelings. The adult men who had regularly played games as children appeared to cope better with stress and anger. In addition, they had more self-confidence and were better at making and maintaining social contacts.
In a follow-up study with colleagues from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Swedish scientists went one step further and examined the influence of gaming, watching television and the use of social media on children’s intelligence. More than five thousand children between the ages of nine and ten were tested for intelligence and followed for two years.
With surprising results, says Swedish neuroscience professor Torkel Klingberg. “Social media and television were found to have neither a positive nor a negative effect. But when we examined the effects of gaming, we found something striking. The IQ of children who gamed more than others increased on average by 2.5 points more than the IQ of the other children. This does not only indicate that gaming has a positive influence on cognitive ability. It also tells us that intelligence is not a static thing in children. It is a development that depends on external factors. And gaming can make a positive contribution to that.”
Who games, reads better and more often
The British National Literacy Trust, a literacy organization, also contributed significantly. To investigate the reading skills and readiness of British youth, from 2019 onwards, they conducted a large-scale study of the reading habits of 4,626 children aged 11 to 16. Children who game showed more confidence in their reading skills and also read more often than peers who did not game.
This study concludes that this is primarily because the games themselves require a certain level of reading skills. To be good at the game, the commands and explanations must be read and understood well and often quickly. The fun the children had in video game also made them want to know more about the game and the main characters and searched for and shared all kinds of secondary information.
The researchers also saw that the gaming youth in the United Kingdom could write even better than other children and that they had more social contacts. The study did not distinguish between the different types of games. The children who played games were therefore not only involved in educational games, but also puzzle games and even action games such as Call of Duty and Minecraft.
The brain’s wiring changes
The positive effects of gaming appear to last for years after you stop playing. Gaming changes the wiring of the brain, scientists at the Open University of Catalonia, in Barcelona, found. Scientists conducted a study on 27 test subjects who had not or very much game as children, and all levels in between. The subjects were between eighteen and forty years old and no longer played games at the time of the study. They were given assignments related to storing and retaining information. Those who had gamed the most as children turned out to have the best memory. They stored the information faster and were also able to reproduce more information. The test subjects who had not gamed as children scored the lowest and the slowest.
Gaming for a sustainable world
Scientists are now also using games to increase awareness of sustainability. Joost Vervoort is senior lecturer in geosciences at Utrecht University and had policymakers play a game during the climate summit in Glasgow last year that confronted them with the consequences of their policies. Vervoort: “There was a story in that game. We built in turning points, such as a flood or famine if policymakers did not choose the most sustainable solution. The consequences of their choices were immediately apparent. Negotiations with other policy makers were very different after the game than before the game.”
According to Vervoort, gaming is a successful instrument because it is not possible to shift responsibility, something that sustainable policy often gets stuck on in practice. “Games are not unique in that regard. Board games in the fifties and sixties of the last century already took us into a different role and a different story. But games are more realistic and therefore have more impact. They give us a new identity and new rules. You see the realistic result of your decision and are confronted with it. Your imagination is stimulated and you come up with solutions that you hadn’t thought of before.”
The Japanese city of Kyoto showed that it is not just gaming, where Vervoort introduced officials and residents to a game in which they had to set up a council to produce more sustainable food. The game was such a success that the Food Policy Council is now also being established in the real world.
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