Children need to learn many skills as they grow up. Teamwork prepares them to be valuable members of the community and the workplace. The ability to problem-solve and think on their feet provides confidence and agility. Making friends teaches them the value of forging relationships.
This might come as a surprise, but video games are one of the best activities for teaching these invaluable skills. The key to capturing the benefits of playing video games is channeling your child’s desire to play toward productive screen time. While your kids are having fun, they won’t realize they are learning skills they’ll use for life.
If you’re not convinced of the advantages of playing video games, read on. We’ll explore associated benefits, as well as some pros and cons.
The Pros and Cons of Playing Video Games
Video games can offer many experiences for kids, depending on the game they choose and their attitude toward gaming. When your child takes an interest in video games, you can keep the various pros and cons in mind to support their interests while keeping them healthy.
The Pros of Video Games
Video games can offer several benefits to kids looking for hobbies and pastimes. Some pros of this activity include:
- Gamifying education: Video games can make learning enjoyable. Students can apply math, reading, science, and historical knowledge and skills to their games to help them advance in the plot or accomplish goals. Some games might be specifically for teaching students, while others incorporate elements that encourage kids to use what they have learned in school to win and learn more in the process. Applying information outside of the school and study settings can help solidify information and strengthen recall for tests and assignments.
- Introducing kids to new cultures: Games can take kids all over the world, helping them discover and explore new places and appreciate other cultures. Even fantasy games featuring imaginary worlds can pull inspiration from real cultures and places, helping expose kids to ways of life and people different from them. They can learn about history and real events through realistic games. Interactions with characters can demonstrate and solidify communication skills for applications working with people outside of the virtual world.
- Practicing problem-solving: Video games introduce conflicts and goals, with various barriers preventing individuals from accomplishing their goals. The challenges posed in video games help kids learn to problem solve by trying various potential solutions, thinking creatively, and using their existing knowledge and resources to help. Video games can create a safe environment for learning how to solve problems because while failing might cause setbacks or losing a life, there are no real-world consequences.
Kids with interests in video games can also find communities of other avid players, helping them make new friends.
The Cons of Video Games
Video games also come with some considerations, however, which can impact the effectiveness of video games on young kids. Some cons include:
- Increasing social isolation: While kids can practice various skills throughout gameplay, it can also keep them from playing with others. Kids might want to spend more time playing their games than interacting with others, and the addicting nature of video games entices them to continue choosing this option. Kids might have trouble making friends at school or keeping long-term friends. However, multiplayer games can encourage kids to play together while gaming.
- Decreasing study time: When students get hooked on their video games, it can seem easy to neglect their studies and keep playing. Further, many kids play late into the night, causing them to lose the vital sleep they need to do well in school.
- Risking obesity: While video games can contain content for some exciting activities, like climbing, sword fighting, and running from zombies, kids will be stagnant while they play. Kids who prioritize playing video games over physical play can risk not getting enough exercise each day, which increases their chances of obesity. However, modern games are taking strides to encourage people to get outside. Pokémon GO™, for example, requires players to explore real-life locations and use the app to look for Pokémon and battle other users.
Cognitive Effects of Playing Video Games
Why are video games good for you? It comes down to their power to exercise basic mental processes, such as perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. Video games offer the brain a good workout. They can change and improve the brain’s performance and structure.
Visual and Spatial Improvements
Video games require individuals to identify and react to stimuli, allowing kids who play video games to better recognize changes in subtle color contrasts and shades. Playing video games can also improve the competence of the part of the brain responsible for identifying visual and spatial relationships among objects.
Video game playing can even eliminate amblyopia, also known as “lazy eye.” This children’s condition in which one eye becomes nonfunctional. By covering the healthy eye and playing with only the weaker eye, some players achieved normal or near-normal functioning, reaching 20/20 vision or better.
Increased Attention Span
Video gamers are better at finding a target quickly in a field of distractions, which helps make them better, safer drivers. Playing action video games has also been shown to improve cognitive functions, including attention. Players can also keep track of a set of objects moving around amid identical objects, like that old “shell game” of picking the hat that hides a walnut. Video games for kids also help players be less impulsive. And because games sharpen vision, they can help children cope with dyslexia— sometimes more effectively than training programs designed specially to treat dyslexia.
Improved Mental Flexibility
Multiple studies have shown that playing video games helps players learn to switch rapidly and accurately between tasks that have conflicting demands. One study found that gamers also performed better on cognitive skill tests that involved memory and impulse control.
Social Benefits of Playing Video Games
Today’s video games are much more complex, creative, and social than games of the past. With their increased sophistication, there are a variety of social benefits of playing video games, and multiplayer online games are especially beneficial.
Games Encourage Cooperative Play
Think about the video games your children play. Often, multiple players are involved, all striving toward a shared goal. Other game modes can encourage cooperation, too. For example, games with a creative mode don’t typically involve a right or wrong path — instead, players are encouraged to exercise their imaginations. Kids playing these games with others can collaborate to generate new ideas and use their cooperative skills to make decisions.
This cooperation may increase the likelihood that players will cooperate or help others when they’re not playing video games.
Students Build Social Bonds Over Video Games
Children who play video games regularly have higher cognitive functioning, stronger peer relationships, and fewer mental difficulties than their nonplaying peers. Social ties are strengthened because children are playing together, often in the same room or at a shared computer. Even when they’re not playing, games and gaming strategies give children something to talk about and plan.
Action Games Can Improve Fine Motor Skills and Hand-Eye Coordination
Hand-eye coordination isn’t just for athletes. Much of what we do every day, whether it’s riding a bike, brushing our hair, or pouring a glass of milk, requires hand-eye coordination. Children need hand-eye coordination at home to fold their clothes and put away their toys. Hand-eye coordination is crucial to writing and working at a computer at school. Good hand-eye coordination comes from the development of fine motor skills that make our hands and fingers responsive to the demands we place on them.
Video games require individuals to move between buttons and toggles to move their players and control various actions. Some require a more subtle touch to get the desired result. Gaming requires individuals to refine their fine and gross motor skills to navigate virtual gaming spaces. They must also keep their eye on the screen to look out for changing stimuli, strengthening their hand-eye coordination as they continue playing.
Video Games Require Balance to Have Benefits
As in everything, moderation matters when it comes to getting benefits from video gaming. You’re probably aware of the challenges, such as obesity, anxiety, and addiction, associated with too much screen time. Despite fears about the cons of playing video games, maintaining a balance is still important. Parents and students can reduce the negative impacts of video gaming and reap the benefits by paying attention to these commonsense time limits and safety practices.
Manage Screen Time
Screen time can include watching TV and sitting at a computer, but for today’s children, playing video games accounts for a great deal of their weekly screen time. Unfortunately, all that sedentary activity keeps kids from getting the exercise that builds healthy bodies and minds. Too much screen time can keep kids from getting enough sleep, and it can lead to obesity.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children ages two to five have one hour of quality programming per day, while parents of older kids should set reasonable limits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adds that children from six through 17 should have one hour of physical activity— away from the screen — every day.
Practice Cyber Safety
Although technology has delivered new worlds of learning to children, it also puts them at risk from those who would exploit them. Children should learn cyber safety to keep the door closed to predators who use social media and video games for access. Parents should teach children it’s OK to alert them if they see anything that makes them uncomfortable.
They can use virtual private networks (VPNs) to block intruders. It’s also important to teach children never to talk to strangers online, just as they wouldn’t open the door to people they don’t know. Children should learn to avoid using public Wi-Fi, where eavesdroppers can “listen in” on their conversations and activities.
Gaming Opportunities at Commonwealth Charter Academy
CCA leverages technological innovation to deliver new and exciting ways to learn. That includes choices in clubs that are tuned in to the interests of today’s children, who live in a digital world. Among them, the CCA Gaming & Computer Club taps into the passion that kids have for games.
Students meet in tournaments, which helps them make friends, while they learn to play games in moderation. In the end, they get all the social, mental, and physical benefits of gaming, while learning to incorporate games into a lifestyle balanced with academics, physical activity, family, and friendships.
The Gaming & Computer Club is just one extracurricular program that allows CCA students to explore their interests and make friends. Children get excited about school when they pursue their passions on their own, and CCA’s array of clubs invites them to explore.
Through clubs, CCA students learn new skills, hone their talents in areas that lead to college and careers, and meet students from around the state who share their passions. CCA’s unique clubs, extracurricular activities, and educational opportunities delve into all the areas where a child wants to learn more. Just imagine the fun they can have while they explore art, theater, broadcasting, books, chess, coding and computers, the environment, or government.
All those clubs are woven into CCA’s philosophy of learning that nurtures the whole child. Personalized education plans are crafted to address each child’s strengths, interests, goals, and challenges. By the time they graduate, they are career-ready and equipped to function in a digital, global world, whether they choose college, career training, the workforce, or the military.
Learn more about the unique opportunities we offer to make learning exciting and fun for CCA students. Enroll today!
