Video gamers, parents, politicians and the press often lionize or attack video games, which opens the door to spin that obfuscates our understanding of how these games affect people. For example, the European Parliament has been debating whether to limit children’s access to video games. In a press statement about the report that resulted from its deliberations, the parliament concluded that games could have “harmful effects on the minds of children.” Reporting on this statement, however, the headline in the Guardian read, “Video games are good for children.”
Psychologists and neuroscientists conducting well-designed studies are beginning to shed light on the actual effects of video games. These studies show a clear trend: Games have many consequences in the brain, and most are not obvious—they happen at a level that overt behaviors do not immediately reflect. Because the effects are subtle, many people think video games are simply benign entertainment.
Too often the discussion ends there in a “good” versus “evil” battle, reminiscent of the plots of the violent video games themselves.
Well-designed video games are natural teachers.1 They provide immediate feedback on the player’s success by distributing reinforcements and punishments, assist in learning at different rates, and offer opportunities to practice to the point of mastery and then to automaticity. Video games also can adapt themselves to individual learners and train players in a way that helps them transfer knowledge or skills to the real world. Gamers repeat actions as they play, and repetition is one precondition for long-term potentiation—the strengthening of brain-cell connections (synapses) through repeated use that is thought to underlie memory storage and learning. To cite a mnemonic that Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb coined in 1940, “Neurons that fire together wire together.”
Several lines of research suggest that playing video games can lead to different types of benefits. For example, a 2002 U.S. Department of Education report presented evidence on the effectiveness of educational games.2 One neuroscience study, published in Nature, showed that playing action video games can improve visual attention to the periphery of a computer screen.3 Another study, which appeared in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrated that action games can improve adults’ abilities to make fine discriminations among different shades of gray (called contrast sensitivity), which is important for activities such as driving at night.4 Other research suggests that games requiring teamwork help people develop collaboration skills.
Several types of studies provide evidence that video games that include “pro-social” content—situations in which characters help each other in nonviolent ways—increase such conduct outside of game play, too. In one study, 161 college students were randomly assigned to play one of several violent games, neutral games, or pro-social games (in which helpful behavior was required). After playing, the students completed a task in which they could either help or hurt another student. Those who had played the violent games were more hurtful to other students, whereas those who had played the pro-social games were more helpful.
We would expect that as people spend more time playing video games, their risk of performing poorly in school, becoming overweight or obese, and developing specific negative physical health outcomes (such as carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries) would increase. We may also correlate more time spent playing with a higher number of video-induced seizures in people with epilepsy or photosensitivity disorder.
What a video game is about—its content—may determine what players take with them from the game to real life. Studies indicate not only that games that include educational content can improve related education skills,2 but also that games designed to help children manage chronic health problems (such as asthma or diabetes) are more effective than doctors’ pamphlets in training children to recognize symptoms and to take their medications.13 Similarly, studies reporting that games with violent content increase aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors suggest that these violent tendencies can extend into real-life situations.
A video game’s on-screen structure contributes to its effects. For example, some games require a player to scan the screen constantly for small changes, such as signals announcing the sudden appearance of an “enemy,” and to respond quickly to these changes. Effective scanning allows the player to shift attention swiftly and automatically from the center of the screen to the periphery.3 Such visual attention is analogous to the type of skill that an air-traffic controller needs: the ability to scan all screen areas, to detect minute changes and to respond quickly.
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