Top 5 Facts About Video Games and Your Health
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It seems like awesome stuff is always bad for you. But do video games fall into that category? Let’s get to the bottom of this. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this instalment, we’re counting down the five most intriguing facts we could find about the effect that video games have on physical health, mental health, and behaviour.
#5: Exercise Video Games Are Legit Exercise
According to published research, playing games like Wii Fit for 20 minutes per day is enough to meet the requirements of the American College of Sports Medicine for maintaining and improving cardiovascular health. That’s good news in particular for two reasons. First, according to a pilot study from the University of California at San Diego, playing Wii sports games a few times per week can drastically reduce depressive symptoms in older adults. Secondly, a 2011 study proved that despite the fact that you’re not actually moving very much, playing a virtual soccer game makes you significantly hungrier than just resting, leading to increased unnecessary calorie intake. Given much of the world’s problem with obesity, exercise video games are a great idea. Too bad nobody plays them anymore.
#4: Misbehavin’ Kids Play a Lot of Games
A study from Oxford University looked at the gaming habits of children, and found a strong link between long periods of spent playing video games and behavioural problems. But don’t worry, Oxford isn’t totally anti-video game; the study doesn’t try to blame the bad behaviour on the games, and does note that there was a correlation between kids who played co-op games had fewer problems with their peers. Also, playing violent games didn’t seem to make any difference in children’s. But more on that later.
#3: Some Games Improve Your Memory, but Not All
A study in 2013 had graduate students play Fruit Ninja, Starfront Collisions, Modern Combat, and Cut the Rope. Only the Cut the Rope Players showed significant improvements in concentration, memory, and the ability to switch fluidly between tasks. So, it’s a good thing that gaming can improve your memory, because it might also destroy it. A causal link has not been established, but gamers rely on a part of the brain called the caudate nucleus more than non-gamers do. This dependency causes reduced gray matter in another area of the brain called the hippocampus. That reduction in gray matter is associated with neurological disorders like Alzheimer's. Damned if you do, damned if you whatever.
#2: Rayman Raving Rabbids Can Treat Dyslexia
A 2009 experiment took 2 groups of dyslexic children and had them play the Ubisoft Wii game Rayman Raving Rabbids. One group played the most action-oriented, mentally demanding mini-games, while the other played the chiller ones. After a few sessions totalling 12 hours of game time, their reading abilities were measured again, and only the kids playing the more hyperactive games showed scores better than before. The improvements were as good or better than the results of conventional, much less fun treatment methods. The big question is: would you rather have trouble reading, or play through 12 hours of this?
#1: Violent Games Do Affect Your Behaviour
Research seems to have proven a few things about playing violent games. One, they can make gamers behave more aggressively in simulated real-life situations. Two, those feelings of aggression can persist at least 24 hours after playing has stopped. Three, when given easy access to candy, violent gamers eat on average three times more of it then non-violent gamers. That same experiment then tested the gamers to see if they’d steal some raffle tickets when nobody was around, and the violent gamers cheated eight times more than the non-violent ones. But do violent games make you more violent in real-life? There’s some debate, but from what we’ve read, the research points towards no.
So, do you think playing video games is good for your health overall? How have they helped you? For more healthy top 10s and misbehaving top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.
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