Video Games may be making kids smarter, according to new study

Kids that play video games have been found to possess better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don’t, as a new study has found. And while this isn’t a confirmation that games will make you have a superhuman mind, it is more proof to add to a pile of arguments to combat the age-old “video games are bad for you” accusation.

The new study, titled “Video Games - Cognitive Help or Hindrance?” (written by Kirk M. Welker, M.D.) looked to figure out how the act of playing games affected the brain development in children from ages 9-10. Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study launched in 2018 to track brain development in thousands of U.S. children as they grow up, the results found that there is at least some sort of connection between the two.

Pulling from data on 2,217 children of the ABCD Study, in which kids were asked how many hours of gaming they played on a weekly basis, the research team divided them between “video gamers” (kids who played at least 21 hours a week) and “non-video gamers” (kids who played nothing). Those who only played occasionally were not included.

By looking at their performances on tests that measure attention, impulse control, and memory, they found that video gamers had higher scores on the tests. To add to this, their brain activity patterns (from MRI screenings performed during the study) were different than that of the other group of kids: their brain regions involved with attention and memory were more active while performing the tests.

As mentioned before, this doesn't mean that games make you objectively smarter. But it does show that gamers have an advantage on certain types of brain functions over non-gamers. However, it’s still not clear if this is because of video-games, or if they’re attracted to them as a result of these differences.

“[The team’s] results suggest a possible benefit to video gaming in the realm of working memory and executive response inhibition”, says Dr. Welker in commentary that accompanies the study. Both groups also had no differences on measurements of mental health, negating the concerns that video games are bad for emotional well being. This is all great news, and from the therapeutic side of the situation, it gives strength to projects making games to treat mental conditions, such as ADHD.

Source | Study (through JAMA Network)