Video Games: Please Enjoy Responsibly

Browsing through the news online, watching the nightly news, or listening to a report during your commute, you have doubtlessly heard some study related to video games and their effects on kids or people in general.

The material is everywhere. Between studies about the effects of specific games to commentary on the inherent violence in game plotlines to the psychological or neurological effects of games on the brain, you’ve probably seen them all. Here, I shall challenge those with scientific evidence.

From a personal standpoint, games are amazing. For a kid growing up going to the library every week, video games became an obvious out for me.

Games are now a crucial social aspect of our culture. (image credited to chacha.com)

In books, you get told an amazing story and maybe you can relate to them on some level, but with video games, you live the story. Whether you’re shooting zombies, slaying dragons, solving puzzles, or chasing down criminals, video games can have something to offer for everyone. Most of you know that, as the median age for gamers is 35 and most college students have played or do play video games.

Now, as a college student, time might not favor video games, but for some of us, they are the unwinding we need. According to Carmen V. Russoniello, Kevin O’Brien, and Jennifer M. Parks of the Virtual Reality Medical Institute in their 2009 study, consistent use of video games has been shown to lower stress in the body, decrease blood pressure and eliminate depression. So for some of you, video games may be the way you unwind.

Out of school, video games obviously have tremendous place in our social and personal lives, but college students need to study. You’ve got an exam. Why play video games?

Whether you procrastinate or not, video games do provide an inescapable distraction for some. Ultimately, while playing games, you’re not doing schoolwork, but is that what school is really about? You should be learning in school and you might be surprised to find video games can help you learn better, faster.

Daphne Bavelier, Ph.D. of the University of Rochester has done considerable research into video games and their neurological effects on the people who play them. Her work has shown that video gamers who play five hours a week consistently show increased focus, better, not worse eyesight, and faster target acquisition and switching.

What does this mean? Visually, gamers excel. They have better memory, faster processing, and increase tracking ability. This translates to better reaction time, increased perception, and better recall. Interestingly enough, her study asked participants to take the tests again, months later. The results stayed with the participants long after the study was finished.

So video games reduce stress outside the classroom and increase memory and acquisition for inside the classroom, but where else are these benefits found? Quite amazingly, in social interaction. For most of us, the idea of video games brings to mind ideas about sitting down and vegetating for a couple of hours, and maybe moving around a bit for Wii consoles, but even then, games are primarily solitary.

However, there are growing communities of gamers willing to pay a bit more to play together. Games like Halo, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto, games critiqued for their glorification of violence, are showing us that violent video games can increase pro-social behavior.

Infamous for its violent game play, The Call of Duty franchise is one of the most successful ever. (image courtesy of wikihow.com, all copyrighted material is property of their respective owners and used under the Fair Use Clause of the 1973 Copyright Act)

These games all share what’s called online play. When players go online, they connect through the internet with other players where they can collaborate in a variety of scenarios to complete various tasks or just interact socially.

For some, this evokes stories of 14 year-olds cussing out people over kills online and while this does happen, online play can increase pro-social behavior. Initial testing at The Ohio State University has shown that by collaborating, gamers will work together and aggression towards each other and people in real life decreases.

It should be noted, however, that this study is not finished, and conclusions have not been officially drawn. For anyone who’s been in an online game, you’ll know the unusual situation of shooting a player one game and having him on your team the next. By necessity, you can’t stay mad for a humiliating kill from the last game.

Games are really quite fascinating. Relatively new, they have yet to be fully explored for their benefits and detriments. Ultimately, if you’re in college, you’re there to learn. Video games are great and have their benefits, but they have their place.

In your brain you have two parts that are in frequent conflict; the reward circuit and the pre-frontal cortex. The reward circuit is responsible for the release of dopamine and is much more primitive, from a time when people only needed subsistence living and so immediate gratification was good. In our modern world, we need to plan ahead.

So binging on video games when you’ve got a term paper due is not the best idea. Afterwards, you can, and sometimes should give yourself that privilege, releasing some dopamine to counteract the cortisol leftover from such a stressful time.

Like alcohol, please enjoy responsibly.