Are There Any Health Benefits of Playing Video Games?
Most gamers assume that gaming isn’t healthy. It’s no secret that sitting on your couch for 5 straight hours with a controller in your hand is going to expand your waistline.
But gaming isn’t completely unhealthy. There are some surprising health benefits to playing video games. Sure, sitting on the couch eating Doritos for 5 hours might make you fat, but there are other surprising health benefits behind video gaming.
With that in mind, here are the top 7 surprising health benefits of playing video games.
1. Improved Dexterity
Video games are a proven way to make you more dexterous. All of that fine motor movement is crucial for developing your dexterity.
Don’t take our word for it – take the word of surgeons across the world. Today, many medical schools are employing the Wii – and other gaming consoles – to improve the dexterity of medical school students.
Medical schools were encouraged to implement video games into their training programs after it was found that students “performed significantly better on a complicated surgery than residents who didn’t go through video game training.”
The next time you go through surgery, you better hope your doctor is a gamer.
2. Faster Reflexes
Gamers – particularly those who play first person shooters – have consistently been shown to have faster response times than non-gamers.
It makes sense: all of those times you’re running through buildings in Call of Duty, ducking behind barriers, and twitching your fingers to snipe someone across the map, you’re forcing your body to react quickly to rapid stimuli. The more you play, the faster your reflexes can get.
As Machinima explains, “It trains our minds to adapt quickly while retaining high levels of information.’
Professional gamers have some of the fastest reflexes in the world today – even faster than many professional athletes.
3. Improved Memory
Playing video games can improve your memory. A study conducted at the University of California Irvine actually proved that video games can boost your memory.
For that study, researchers recruited non-gamer college students to play either a 2D or 3D video game for 30 minutes per day over a 2 week period.
Before and after that 2 week period, the students took memory tests. Students who played the 3D video game clearly improved their scores on the memory test, while the 2D gamers did not. The boost wasn’t small either: the 3D gaming group improved memory by about 12%, which is approximately the same amount your memory is expected to decrease between ages 45 and 70.
For the record, the 2D gaming group in this study played Angry Birds, while the 3D gaming group played Super Mario 3D World.
4. Pain Reduction and Improved Pain Tolerance
This is one you probably didn’t expect. Can video games actually reduce pain? According to a study from Wheeling Jesuit University, they can! That study found that “video games can distract someone’s attention from a painful activity, and can help people with chronic pain problems.
Essentially, video games act as a visual and mental distraction, helping to prevent people from focusing on their pain. Researchers specifically noticed a reduction of pain (or even a total elimination of pain) when participants played sports or fighting games.
Playing video games didn’t just temporarily distract people from their chronic pain: they actually increased pain tolerance. Maybe getting shot and killed thousands of times in Halo makes you numb to pain?
5. Improved Social Skills
There’s a stigma that gamers are all socially awkward. However, a study from Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University showed that this wasn’t necessarily the case.
Griffiths looked at gamers over a 15 year period. He found that video games significantly improved the social skills of teens with severe learning disabilities.
6. Weight Loss
Video games make you fat. Sitting on the couch for 7 hours doesn’t make you healthy. However, one study from the University of Oklahoma found the opposite effect. That study involved children between ages 10 to 13 and showed that “exergaming” burned as many calories as moderate exercise.
For that study, exergaming games included games like Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Sports – sorry, they didn’t prove that sitting in a chair playing Civ V for 12 hours will help you lose weight.
7. Stress Reduction
Medical Science performed a 6 month heart rate study on gamers. They found that games reduced the adrenaline response by 50%, reducing your body’s response to stress in times of heightened activity.
Health Benefits of Playing Video Games Conclusion
Clearly, based on the information we learned above, gaming is one of the best things you can do for your body. Just swap out the Doritos and Mountain Dew for vegetables and water, and you’re set!
