Why playing video games can be good for you

all right

hello so i’m aspen showback and i’m here

to talk to you about

video games something that probably all

if not most of you

play to a certain degree one way or

another maybe it’s

uh on your phone maybe it’s on the

playstation or maybe it’s every day at

home

so let’s talk about that a little bit

but before that let’s talk about me of

course you know

so this is me when i was 11 years old is

a couple days ago

and this is my first computer i played

fifa 97

on it as last time i ever played that

game

my parents gave me a choice do you want

a motorcycle for kids

or a new computer and here we are

imagine alternative timelines and stuff

you know where would i be instead

uh and i really got into it right away

video games were great

a bit simpler you know the graphics were

different back then

but they were still great and then in my

late teens this is

me and i started making i still had some

hair

and i started making gaming videos frag

movies and stuff like that i was one of

the first to start putting those

together

and committing to the community and

making highlight videos and that sort of

stuff with

eoliphic was probably the biggest one

i’ve made and in 20 years since then

i’ve been making videos about games but

on an amateur level from all sorts of

things counter-strike to

the long dark and that sort of stuff but

i’m not a professional gamer i am

actually a psychologist

because i then decided to look at well

what actually happens to our behavior

when we play video games

is it good is it bad is it both well

let’s find out you know

so today we’re going to talk about some

of the benefits of video games but

before we get into that

i thought we’d look a little bit also

about what are some of the

misconceptions about it and what does

video games maybe

not do to you and one of them is violent

behavior

and that sort of stuff so we’re going to

talk a little bit about that before we

get into it though

the history of gaming spans from pretty

much the 70s to today

initially it was just more an exhibition

thing scientists will make some sort of

programming or rudimentary game

and show it off to people then it

transitioned into the

arcade you know all you go and play

together

and then they went into the home with

the consoles and sat in front of the tv

as a family and played video games

and then of course you had the broadband

revolution in the early 2000s

now you had this thing called internet

that we could all go

together and you know as a group we

could slay that dragon that drops the

epic loot and all that stuff

so it became this global phenomenon were

all connected can play

with everyone in the world both against

each other

or with each other so it changed the

whole landscape of it

and of course now we have gaming in the

phones

so gaming is really everywhere about 40

percent of the population plays video

games

in some way or another and of course not

everyone has access to video games so

the real number will probably be higher

if everyone did have access to it

we play we’re on our phones all the time

and some of that is just playing video

games

in norway about 90 percent of children

play video games one way or another both

boys and girls

it’s only until they come there to the

late teens that boys tend to do a bit

more but still about two-thirds of all

girls still play it so

it’s something that’s really big the the

video games is a billion dollar industry

it’s on par with the videos as i’ve yeah

i feel the film industry today

esport is growing it’s starting to catch

up with like

regular sports i guess you could call it

uh so it’s this huge thing we can even

watch people play

and we can go on twitch and watch people

play it and realize how

really bad we are at the game we watch

them do it so it’s become a really long

way but what does it really do

with us when we play the games

well early on people really talked about

violent behavior when you played video

games

i mean look at this kid doesn’t she look

angry she probably got

destroyed by smurfs again or something

like that and she rage quit

so does that mean that video games make

us violent

because that was the discussion in the

early 2000s especially

concerned parents thinking that their

kid is sitting there

staring at the screen killing people you

know

maybe she’ll become a murderer when she

grows up you know so there’s all this

fear

but someone is just paranoia of not

really understanding what’s happening

because it’s different it’s new

and to be fair there was some research

especially early on

that did show a link between

violent video games and aggressive

behavior

but in order to understand that you have

to understand that just finding a link

by itself

doesn’t really prove anything because of

something called correlation

because ask yourself is it that playing

a violent video game makes you more

aggressive

or is it that aggressive people like to

play violent video games

right how can you differentiate between

the two well it’s really really hard

you have to have a cause and effect

relationship and you don’t have that

so that was one of those earlier

problems with this just because you have

a connection doesn’t mean that one

causes the other

and in fact there’s been a lot of

research showing that there’s really

other variables that contribute to

violent behavior in children such as

personality traits that

predispose aggressive behavior gender

boys tend to be more aggressive than

girls

stress including when you play video

games and you get

destroyed like your team destroys you

you get really stressed and that can

trigger aggressive behavior in other

words it’s not really the game that does

it it’s your reaction to the game that

does

it and of course actual exposure

to family violence so seeing violence in

the home

that’s a big predictor of aggressive

behavior so even if we were to accept

that video games do affect you and make

you more aggressive

i’m not saying it doesn’t but it doesn’t

do it as much as we think

even if we accept that we have to look

into well if that’s the case

what about other things like the music

kids listen to

or the news they watch and also what

kind of games are they playing

you can’t talk about it in general are

you really saying that people that play

ammo crossing are going to be as violent

people who play doom

you know so you got to take it into

context it’s not

that there’s no connection but you have

to look at the whole picture and also

understand the cause and effect

relationship

you also have to take into account who’s

actually saying these things

because there is a term that you may not

be familiar with even though you all

know what it

is and that’s something called

juvenile which i’ll get to in a second

but before we go that i’m just going to

show you one piece of evidence

which is something you can use if

someone ever tells you

that video games cause

violent behavior you can show them this

so this basically is going to show you

the opposite

because this study is in the states and

it looked at video game sales

over 30 years and it looks like this so

as i was saying

it gets more and more popular right so

video game sales go up

what happens is that the criminal

violent acts

at the same time well they go down

so if you’re going to say that playing a

video game makes you aggressive then i

can just say

well buying a video great game makes you

less aggressive

see if you accept one argument you have

to accept the other one as well

because both are correlation and here

who knows what’s happening maybe people

who are really violent

are getting distracted and they’re

staying at home playing gta or something

who knows right but the point is that

you can’t base things on just

correlation you have to

think about the larger picture but the

problem is also who’s saying these

things and that’s what i was mentioning

earlier there’s something called

juvenile you may not have heard this

term

but you know what it is because that is

when someone says

back in my day it was so much better and

kids these days

you know that’s juvenile that’s when you

have a negative attitude towards the

young

because it’s somewhat different from

when you were young

right and that’s not new today that’s

always existed

ancient philosophers will complain about

young people

you know when you are older or when i’m

older

i’ll be complaining to my grandchildren

and say back when i was young

we couldn’t plug into the matrix and

walk about we had to use wi-fi

you know and they’d be like wow wi-fi

that’s so

old you know can’t believe it you know

that sort of stuff

so i’ll complain about it because

it’s just not familiar to me and that

creates a negative attitude

towards it so what happened in the early

parts of research on video games

was that some of the people who

expressed themselves and researched

they were of the older persuasion right

so that meant that they are influenced

negatively it’s not

that they’re old per se is that that all

the people tend to play video games

less and they ever have less experience

with them

and that makes it kind of scary and

dangerous they don’t really understand

it

and that influences your opinion so if

you’re a scholar

or a politician or a clinician and

you’re asked about video games

and you don’t play video games yourself

then you’re probably an older person and

you’re probably going to say oh video

games that’s really bad

right so that’s how this works and

this is not a jab at all the people it’s

just that they don’t really play video

games and just keep this in mind when

you are old because you’ll be exactly

the same

you know in all sorts of things okay

so with that in mind and we talked a

little bit about

this what video games doesn’t do so it

doesn’t really cause

violent behavior because that’s not

really that founded

it’s not that there’s no links but it’s

widely misunderstood you have to look at

it in the wider picture

so let’s look at some of the benefits

well there’s all sorts of benefits

to playing a video game we can’t talk

all of them

but can we we can talk about some of

them and are you excited look at these

kids they’re really excited to find out

so why don’t we be as excited so there’s

some of them that we can go through

one of them is well-being that is to be

happy

you actually get happier playing video

games

if you play about 10 hours every two

weeks

you are happier than people that don’t

play video games how about that

so if we were to accept it makes them

aggressive at least they’re happy being

aggressive right

you know so uh there are certain

conditions to this

which is autonomy that is to say if you

play a video game

you have to be in control of the game

you are the one

in charge and you enjoy you’re playing

it because you want to

you also have to sense a relatedness to

the game and the people you play with

if you don’t have that if you are being

forced to play

either because someone’s telling you to

play or because you feel like

i really need to log on and get this

raid bus because it’s going to expire

you know

you don’t really want to do it but you

do it

then you actually don’t enjoy it and you

become

unhappy so it’s only when you actually

want to do it and you have some sort of

control over it

and then there’s things like mathematics

a lot of games

have a mathematical component to it so

this is very straightforward like

just add and subtract but sometimes it’s

probability

and likelihoods and statistics and

budgets

think about games like hearthstone where

you have to calculate what’s going to

happen next

think about things like the sims so you

have budgets or even bigger like

simulations like sim city or the tycoon

games you have to build something on a

larger scale

so you have to use budgets for that in

fact there was one study that used the

sims

to teach people about budgets because

they gave them

a limited budget to build a house and

its inventory no cheats you can’t build

that mansion

and then they had to manage the

resources that they have

so you’re teaching kids how to manage

money basically

which is good you want to do that and

then it’s things like

language this is a really big one

because not everyone has

english as their first language so

there’s been a lot of research looking

at people learning

english through video games it doesn’t

have to be english obviously it can be

whatever as long as you change the

language

and there’s a lot of evidence showing

that you can learn a language or at

least get better at the language through

video games

but again it depends on the game you’re

playing if you’re learning english

through call of duty you’re mostly going

to learn

enemies over there we got killed again

the bombs ready

or whatever you know there’s going to be

a bit limited everyday use

of what you learn but if you learn it

through something like the sims

all the words you use are quite familiar

the table

chair glass you know these are everyday

words you will use so you can expand

your vocabulary quite

a lot and in norway about 70 percent of

children who play video games

say that they feel that english is

substantially improved because they play

video games

so you can play many of them in

norwegian but they often choose not to

because an excuse to reinforce the words

so it’s a great tool for that and then

you have creativity

this is another one where again it

depends

on your control if you play minecraft

which a lot of people do they tend to

score quite high on creativity scores

not surprisingly since that’s mostly

what you do in minecraft you build stuff

right

and then destroy it half the time but

if you are not in control of what you do

in minecraft then you don’t actually

score higher on creativity anymore

if someone’s forcing you to do it or

telling you how to build it

then you don’t feel creative but if you

are in control and you are doing it the

way you want to do it

then you score high on creativity

compared to other types of games

and then also we have decision making

this is for those of you who play

those fast games who play counter strike

and pub g

and call of duty and overwatch and all

those things

you guys have to do it really fast

because you have to make snap decisions

where a few milliseconds could be the

difference between winning

and losing because things happen really

really really fast

and what that causes is that for one

thing you

become better at decision making in

general you become better at

making a quick decision when it’s

necessary

you also get better spatial awareness

you get better idea of your surroundings

you get better attention not

surprisingly because you have to

constantly pay attention to what’s

happening

and you also get better eye and hand

coordination so you can coordinate

between them there’s even one study to

show that people who play

first-person shooters have better

hand-eye coordination

than surgeons do so if you want to

become a doctor

call of duty is really the game for you

it seems

of course you know they have to take it

into account what kind of game they were

playing in the study but you get the

idea

and then finally we have cognitive aging

that is to say

the mental age or like sort of your

mental abilities

as you age as we get older these can

start to deteriorate

but you can keep them active by

stimulating yourself and sometimes you

can do that by playing sudoku

going to an exhibition or whatever

something that keeps you mentally active

right and video games is one of the ways

you can do that

so all the people that play video games

show increased scores on

attention memory and reasoning

so that cognitive age is improved but

again it only depends

on what game they’re playing because if

they don’t enjoy the game they’re

playing

then this doesn’t happen it’s only if

they actually think it’s fun

so again it matters so coming back to

discussion just like when we talk about

aggression

you have to specify at least what type

of game

we’re talking about we can’t generalize

because there’s so many different games

playing plants vs zombies is not the

same as playing

grand theft auto for example right they

are different categories and they will

develop different skills

so with that in mind you gotta take into

account what you’re playing so when you

go

and play a game next time think about

what that game

is and what sort of skills you think you

are developing

with that game and most importantly

think about are you playing this game

because you want to or is it because

someone’s pressuring you because if

someone’s pressuring you to play it

you’re not really going to get the same

benefits now it’s not to say that there

are

only benefits there are of course

drawbacks with video games too

just like anything else you can get

addicted to it there’s still some issues

of

sexism of trolling this could be social

withdrawal

although there’s also a lot of studies

that show that video games actually

makes people more social

because people can connect more easily

online than they can in person

so that’s another upside as well so when

you play next time think about what

you’re playing

and why you’re playing it and maybe

think about what should you play

if you want to develop a certain type of

skill and with that

good luck and have fun

you