by Adriana Disano

Created on: August 26, 2010   Last Updated: August 28, 2010

Video games are the unexpected favorite for the next big health craze. With social, physical, and mental benefits, video games cross the entire health spectrum with the benefits they can provide to players.

Social Benefits:

Video games are known in the media for cultivating antisocial personalities, but can we really accept that as the truth?

These days, video games can be played from anywhere in the world, and can connect to just about anywhere too. Modern technology allows players to compete against each other or work together with one another from America to Italy to Singapore and more. Online avatars also force players to accept one another as brethren regardless of race or gender.

Players are associating and developing key social skills with a wider variety of others every day. Guild members help each other out, fighters learn to take failure with a smile, and teams network complex plans to maximize their performance from all over the globe.

Players are learning how to interact with each other in healthy ways every day.

Physical Benefits:

Video games are usually portrayed as causing physical injury or health conditions, but when played in moderation they can actually be good for your health!

They are shown to improve vision significantly. Studies suggest that contrast perception is increased by nearly 60%-that's a huge difference to consider when you're behind the wheel of a car at night.

Video games also improve co-ordination. But the difference between a player and a non-player is so significant that surgeons are trained using video games in the modern day. They're even said to improve coordination more than most sports.

And with the new generation of Move, Kinect, and Wii video games, fitness is taken to a whole new level of fun. Game developers are focusing more and more on the healthy consumer, and games which incorporate movement and fitness into their gameplay are becoming prevalent.

Mental Benefits:

While video game players have been chastised the world round for being slower than other students, studies show that video games actually have more cognitive benefits than your average sport. When you simply analyze the nature of video games, it becomes apparent why this is.

Video games feature natural puzzle-solving elements everywhere you look. Action video games have sliding block puzzles, survival/horror games bring riddles into the mix, and some games like Professor Layton are made entirely of puzzles for players to solve!

Besides that, strategy and critical thinking are must-haves for any player's repertoire of skills. Players constantly have to decide which items to use and which to conserve, or what stats to increase on their characters, or who to send out next into battle.

They're also constantly computing. Whether it's adding up damage values or multiplying by ability power, gamers have to keep a constant check on the damage they're dealing to the enemy or the debt they're racking up.

Video games require way more mental activity than the public gives them credit for.

In summary , the benefits of video games are as widespread as they are powerful. They train players for real-life situations through social interaction, physical training, and mental streamlining, and are even used to treat conditions like PTSD and ADHD.

Video games are so malleable as a form of entertainment that there are literally no limits for what can be done with them in the future to benefit players.

Learn more about this author, Adriana Disano.
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