by Trent Greguhn

Created on: May 01, 2009

I think that this question means to ask whether playing video games lowers your intelligence or keeps it static. IQ is an innate trait and measures the rate at which you learn, not the overall intelligence of a person. So, let's stop avoiding the real question and get to it- do video games make you stupid?

Video games are a form of media like any other, on par with music and movies. So you could for all intents and purposes ask the same question of them, but I'll stick with video games here. Like everything with life nothing is absolute and this question has no one answer, but many. So we'll weigh the answers and judge the overall effect of video games, to see whether they'll be beneficial or detrimental to intelligence.

What kind of games are we talking here? RPG, sports, action, platform, RTS, FPS, fighting, simulation, survival horror? There's a plethora of genres spanning the vieo game world, just as many if not more than movies or music has. Role playing games, whether massively multiplayer or not, has book amounts of reading, strategy and nowadays moral choices the player must make throughout the game. It's a more or less interactive book that the reader gets to make a lot of the choices in. Sports is straightforward enough, however the player must manage a team, weigh their roster and choose the correct players to be best for their victory. Action requires fast paced, high reaction times to successfully complete a game; likewise with platform, first person shooters, and fighting. Any game you find is likely to provide some sort of mental stimulation, and games like Brain Age are focused on education and a learning curve for the player to progress.

I fail to see how a video game would lower your intelligence any more than a movie or a CD would. With video games it requires a certain amount of attention and skill to play, rather than being passive and observing. With the Wii console out by Nintendo, there is a multitude of physical activities that the player takes part in, so much so that they are even losing weight with some of the games. Video games are healthy and mentally stimulating? Imagine that.

The fact is the average person has trouble playing many of the modern games that are out. They cannot wrap their brain around the x-y axis controls, often only running forward, then turning, not being able to do both at the same time. They can feel practically overwhelmed with the freedom given to them and the amount of possibilities that are at their fingertips.

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