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