by Marcus Skiles

Created on: August 28, 2009

Ever since the invention of Pong, video games have held their place in households, dorm rooms, and even offices all over the world. Many people use video games to escape from problems, to distract themselves from a stressful situation, or simply to entertain themselves for a few hours at a time. However, the question remains-is playing video games truly a healthy way to accomplish these goals? Most parents would say no to this question, but many surveys, tests, and experiments performed by true scientists would argue against that verdict.

In 2007, at the University of Rochester, an experiment was conducted to determine whether or not playing action-based video games was beneficial to eyesight, or if it actually destroyed the ability to see. The results were astounding-after playing Unreal Tournament (a first person shoot-'em-up game) for only one hour per day for a month, the students involved (who had played either very little or no video games in the last year) showed a twenty percent increase in the spatial resolution of their vision. What this means is that after a mere thirty hours of playing an action video game, students' eyes were better equipped to discern figures on an eye chart, even when other symbols were crowded around them. Another group in the same experiment was instructed to play Tetris for the same amount of time. Tetris, although equally demanding in terms of motor control, is a much less visually complex game. This group showed no improvements in their vision whatsoever. Thus, it can be concluded that video games are indeed beneficial to eyesight.

Video games have also been proven to assist those who need help dealing with degrees of pain or sickness. For example, in one case study an eight-year-old child was suffering from neurodermatitis and scarring due to constant picking at his upper lip. All previous treatments had failed, so on a whim his doctors gave him a handheld video game to distract him. Within two weeks, the affected area of his face had healed. Other studies show that playing video games can actually reduce nausea and lower blood pressure of children treated with chemotherapy, compared to the control group who simply rested after treatment. The children who played the video games also required fewer analgesics than the control group did. The way video games accomplish this is simple-they take the attention of the subject and remove it from whatever it is that is causing them pain or discomfort, without requiring passive

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>