8 Health Benefits of Playing Video Games

 

The debate has been going on for a long time whether video games are good or bad for us and most people assume that they are bad for both your mental and physical health. Most people deem video games as unsophisticated and time-wasting, you just sit on your couch and stare at the screen. That's what most people think about video games but in reality, video games are known to be very beneficial. Believe it or not, scientific research shows that video games are actually good for you.

Video games have various positive effects on both your mental and physical health. Gaming can help those suffering from various addictions or cravings to decrease their intensity of desires. A person learns various things by playing video games and applying those things in real life. Contrary to popular belief, video games can actually promote and improve health & social activity through various avenues.

Here are some of the Health Benefits of Playing Video Games:

Better Problem-Solving Skills: Playing games can teach you to solve different kinds of problems. When a person starts playing video games, then he encounters different types of problems during the game and to progress further in the game, he has to get a way around those problems and solve them. This can help develop the problem-solving skills of a particular individual, and those people who play strategy-based games show an improvement in their problem-solving skills.

Improves Brain Function: Various recent studies have suggested that playing video games can help improve the function of your brain. Playing video games is known to increase the gray matter of your brain or in simple terms, the size of your brain. This can have profound effects on a person's brain function as playing video games can have impacts on different regions of the brain that are responsible for memory, spatial orientation, information organizations, and fine motor skills. Playing games can exercise your brain and improve your brain function.

Improves Eyesight: Video games are also known to improve your vision as long as you are not sitting in front of the screen for 5-10 hours and sitting two feet away. A study has shown that playing video games can make a person more responsive to different shades of colors.

Good for Mind: Video Games also have a benefit on your mental health and they can boost your mood and help relieve anxiety & stress. According to various studies, the relation between video games & stress has been found and that's why video games have been used for various therapies for over a decade.

Helps you to be Persistent: Video games can also help you to be more persistent. You either win or you keep on trying, games help you to be persistent and it can also help you to be more confident, persistent towards your goals, and learning from your mistakes.

Involve Physical Activity: Nowadays, most video gaming consoles come with technology to get gamers off of their chairs and couch & onto their feet. An example is VR gaming that not only takes gaming to the next level but also involves physical activity to keep the gamers fit. Game developers are now starting to develop such games that are played across physical space, building the game around real-world location and events, to make sure that the gamers are also physically active.

Better Social Skills: Most people think of a video gamer as a stereotypical shy person who is introvert and afraid to develop social relationships, but that is only shown in movies, in reality that is not the case. People who play video games are likely to have good social skills and build better relationships with people around them due to the teamwork, social, and collaborative components of certain video games.

Better Decision-Making: People who play video games are also known to be better at decision-making. This come from the fact that most video games involve the buildup of certain reflexes and making quick & best decision in various situation to get out of them and a person playing such video games will also develop better decision-making skills in real life because the video games are teaching who to take the sensory data in and translate into correct decisions for the given situation.

These are some of many benefits of playing video games and how video games can have beneficial effects on your health. It is a common myth that video games are bad for your health. If you don't exceed the limits and don't overplay the video games than they are definitely good for your health, however, if you keep on playing video games for long hours then they will definitely have a negative impact on your mind and health because excess of anything, be it video games or anything else is not good.