Surprising Benefits of Playing Video Games

Parents often worry that their children are spending too much time using games consoles. Maybe all their pocket money is spent on high definition video games, or every request they have for birthday or Christmas presents is for PS3 bundles. It might reassure parents to know that there are several benefits of playing video games.
 
Gamers Think Faster
 
Decision making, in life and video games, involves weighing up probabilities by gathering small pieces of information and constantly recalculating them. Research has found that gamers who play action games collect this information faster and process it more efficiently.
 
Playing Video Games can Reduce Pain
 
The American Pain Association undertook a study which found that burns victims suffered 50 percent less pain during wound care when they played video games. A similar improvement was reported by chemotherapy patients. They also found that violent games had the most beneficial effects, possibly due to the ‘fight or flight response’ which reduces the pain sensitivity.
 
Gaming Can Improve Hand-Eye Co-ordination
 
If you want your kids to grow up to be surgeons, make sure you get them PS3 bundles for Christmas. Studies have found that surgeons who play video games for more than three hours a week complete their tasks 27 percent faster, and make 38 percent fewer mistakes during surgery. Even those who don’t have such demanding jobs will benefit from improved hand-eye coordination. By having to operate controllers with many different buttons and switches while at the same time looking at a screen, beneficial skills are developed. Studies at Deakin University in Australia have found that video games also improve motor skills in children such as throwing or catching a ball.
 
Video Gaming can Improve Eyesight
 
Surprisingly, spending hours staring at a screen while playing video games is not bad for your eyesight, but can actually improve it. The University of Rochester has done several studies showing that gaming boosts the ability to see small objects, and makes fine differences in contrast easier to see. McMaster University in Ontario found that 40 hours of gaming improved the eyesight of people with impaired vision, enabling them to read more lines on an eye chart than they could before playing the game. Other studies have reported improvements in depth perception and vision sharpness for adult sufferers of amblyopia, or lazy eye.

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