Playing Defense
For decades now, video game players have had to defend their passion to the masses. In fact, I can’t think of another popular pastime that carries with it so many negative stigmas. I remember growing up in the 90’s, an era in which most adults thought games were the digital equivalent of candy, rotting your brain from the inside out, and having to fight tooth and nail to be taken seriously.
As the medium grows, and the average age of gamers matures (it’s currently up to 33), acceptance is slowly rolling through the non-gaming population. Now, by utilizing emerging technologies to map brain activity more accurately, scientists are finally validating what many of us have known for a long, long time. Gaming is not inherently bad for you. The kicker? Some of the genres most reviled by anti-gaming activists may actually improve parts of the brain in a myriad of important ways.
Not The Content, But How We Process It
I recently came across a TED talk by Daphne Bavelier, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Geneva University. In it she lectures on how playing video games, specifically first-person action-oriented shooters, can improve brain plasticity and affect task transition and visual systems in a number of positive ways.
Throughout her short presentation, she debunks common myths about gaming, using data to prove that games inherently do no harm, at least on a physical level. Does gaming result in poor eyesight? No, gamers actually have above-average acuity, an easier time tracking multiple objects, and are better at filtering out visual clutter.
Does gaming lead to a shortened attention span? No, in fact gamers who indulged in certain action titles experienced positive changes in their parietal lobe, frontal lobe, and anterior cingulate, which allowed them to interpret complex visual information more efficiently.
There is a lot packed into this small presentation, and Dr. Bavelier does a great job of making her research accessible to everyone. Check out the entire talk below.
What Should We Take Away?
What I’ve realized during my 30-odd years as a gamer, is that people love to make blanket judgements on the medium. I think people just like to make blanket judgements in general. It’s probably an easier world-view to hold.
That being said, it’s never quite so black and white, and Dr. Bavelier admits that herself. Bingeing is bad. With anything! Even Netflix. The positive impacts of shooters on brain function are just that. They don’t, and shouldn’t, account for the negative impacts of content. Does shooting digital people mindlessly for hours on end have an impact on how we process violence or how we experience empathy? I have no idea. Hopefully there is a study being done on that right now.
What this talk does show is that video games are not candy. They are not inherently, as a medium, bad for you. More than that, they may actually be able to rearrange our neural pathways, helping us become more efficient and aware.