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Essay: Video Games: Benefits in Brain, Life Skills and School Performance

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Noah Martin 

Mrs. Weaver

October 26, 2017

Video games: The Argument for Benefits.

Many people believe in the lies the media tells about video games. The media claims it could be destroying your child’s chance at a healthy life, when in fact, video games could be benefiting them in many different ways. Not only does it benefit children it can benefit adults and senior citizens as well. Schools consider them to be a nuisance when they actually give a new perspective in and outside the classroom. Society as a whole needs to know, they don’t make you more violent or have no empathy. Lots of people, mainly parents, believe that video games harm people so they try to keep their children away from them. In reality, video games make your life better. Video games can provide many benefits to your lifestyle as “numerous academic studies indicate that playing video games has many psychological and even physical benefits” (Guarini) Video games, despite popular opinion have many health benefits, from helping your brain grow, to giving you life skills, and helping people do better in school. 

Video games majorly grow the brain in two different places, the hippocampus and the right pre-frontal cortex. The hippocampus is used for spatial awareness and directional movement/moving with a purpose. These two things are particularly useful in driving, where you have to know where your car is and what direction you are going in. The hippocampus is also used for memorization, helping people memorize objects, such as maps and bible verses. Playing video games requires both visual and audial memory. The player needs to read or listen to the instructions which might only be provided at the tutorial, therefore the player needs to remember them throughout the game. Mastery of the keys on your keyboard helps the gamer easily move their character in the game. This helps improve your memory, both in short- term or long-term. Thus helping their ability to commit things to memory. (Galloway) The other area of the brain that is grown is the right pre-frontal cortex. This is the area of the brain where planning and organization are used. This is extremely useful in life to have this part of your brain grow, planning and organization is needed for almost everything. When playing games such as Rainbow Six: Siege, the player must think through tactfully what they are about to do and the consequences. They must organize their team to work to win otherwise they will lose. This transitions to life when making decisions lightning quick from all the time they put in. They get usefulness out of it. People who play these games, studies have shown that their brains grow. Overall, video games are a useful way to improve your brain, and grow stronger in; spatial awareness, directional movement, memorization, planning, and origination.(Guarini)

Video games are helpful ways to teach people life skills, such as sight, perseverance, and making decisions. In 2012, researchers at the university of Rochester discovered was that when playing action video games, it could greatly improve eyesight. From being able to define more edges and spot things moving from a farther distance. They also discovered that when people who were visually impaired played video games it improved their eyes to read one, two, and occasionally three extra lines on the eye chart. “Don’t sit too close to the television” something that many parents say, but surprisingly without a lot of science to support it. Now, scientists are uncovering that games, played with even time share with regular lifemay actually improve, not strain, your vision. Some researchers used certain patients try to play games using only their “lazy” eye, with the “good” one cover with an eyepatch. Those players showed improved, sometimes normalized improvement in the “lazy” eye. (Guarini) Video Games also help in perseverance. When playing games such as Pac-Man or brick breaker, players are “rewarded” for getting better scores than last time and putting their best efforts in. Video games at a fundamental level are built around perseverance, whether it’s to beat that boss or having to re run the same level for some loot, they teach to never give up. (Galloway) When talking about perseverance in an article David brooks said “then gamers should be, on average, more successful than nongamers.”(Suellentop) When playing certain video games you may find that one level gets to hard or seems impossible that’s when you have to use tenacity, something that we use in the real world to solve problems and preserve. (Galloway) Gamers develop perseverance and push on through difficulty helping them to improve their life skills. Finally, gaming helps you make decisions.Video games help with making decisions faster. In action game you are given a split second to hear a sound or see something before you react. This skill to react quickly and decide where to go from there is especially useful when driving.(Schmidt) Not only does video games improve faster decisions, but it also improves your ability to make smarter decisions. When playing Puzzle games, they help people deduct and decide the easiest way or the most profitable way to solve a problem. When solving a puzzle in “The Witness” a storytelling game with complicated and intriguing puzzles, there are many ways to solve them. Gamers by playing these games learn to make decisions to find the easiest way to do things, helping them in the corporate world. (Suellentop)

School, a place of misery for many children, could be improved through video games. An article from an English teacher Jonathan Ostenson He says, “Once the students begin to see the unique affordances of video games, they are on the path to becoming more critical about the ways media work in their lives”. (Ostenson) By playing video games, children can be more focused, and more creative in school. Many games use real life events in history to write their stories. Those characters and areas can then increase a child’s interest in learning more about the environment they live in.

When playing video games, children get rewarded through being focused, whether it’s finding a secret passage or a hidden treasure the more attention you pay to the game the better the rewards. This can translate to the classroom, when children are focused they are reward with better grades and the occasional brownie point. Video games improve the attention span of young toddlers though young adults. When playing action games, they must make sure that they are focused on just the game because if distracted they could die. This helps the children focus on the same thing for longer periods of time, helping in school when they have a lecture to get through from the teacher. (Vandewater) Creativity can come from a myriad of places, but one often overlooked it video games. When playing games like Minecraft children and adults alike are given infinite possibilities to create.The amount of creativity required for gaming can be used in school when making projects or by finding a new way to do something.(Griffiths)

Brain growth, life skills, and learning capabilities, all of these are improved through playing video games. Not only this but people need to stop the spreading of lies through mainstream media and culture that video games make children more violent and essentially do not care about others. Video games were made to improve lives not twist them around and ruin them. Try playing games once or twice a week and reap the benefits for yourself. 

Work Cited Page

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Guarini, Drew. 9 Ways Video Games Can Actually Be Good For You. www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2013/11/07/video-games-good-for-us_n_4164723.html.

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