Playing games of any sort as an adult can often get a bad rep. Video games, especially, are often thought of as a waste of time and energy. However, gamers know that this is far from the truth. The surprising truth is that gaming in any form, be it video games, board games, card games, or online games, can be massively beneficial. Studies carried out on over 2,000 children who played games found that those who played more than 21 hours per week performed better cognitively and had a better memory than those who didn’t.
Interesting right? This post is going to explore some of the ways gaming is beneficial to your brain.
4 Ways Gaming Is Good For The Brain
Improved Memory
As you get older, your memory starts to deteriorate naturally. It’s one of the many signs of aging that impact your health. However, gaming can help you improve your memory as you are exercising your hippocampus, the part of your brain that converts short-term memory to long-term memory. For instance, playing strategy games like Age of Empires or puzzle games like Tetris can be particularly beneficial. As you play these games, you need to store information and use this information to facilitate gameplay, meaning you rely on your brain to pull the information you need out and learn new things to progress. As you get older, this can be massively beneficial.
Better Decision Making
Any type of gaming, whether Minecraft, Pokemon, card games like Solitaire, sudoku, or even chess, involves you making decisions. As you play and become more experienced, your decision-making will improve through repetition and trial and error. The more skilled you become, the better your game-playing decisions will be. The reason is that you focus on the problem within the game for improved outcomes and results. This focus can then be transferred to the real world, empowering you to use those skills to make better decisions in your life and display an aptitude for approaching realistic problems and making decisions efficiently.
Problem-Solving
Game playing can throw many challenges your way, depending on your game of choice. Most require you to think outside the box and get creative with solving problems, which is massively beneficial for your brain because it forces you to use areas of your brain to learn new things and create new neural pathways, which is a good thing.
Obstacles in gameplay, more often without exercise direction or instruction, usually need to be addressed fast, meaning you need to think quickly to resolve this issue and move forward, forcing you to get creative with your approach. This quick-witted problem-solving is a skill many employers look for, and if you can demonstrate practical problem-solving skills, you can apply this to many areas of your life.
Improved Social Skills
This point mostly applies to social gaming that engages in multiplayer gameplay; however, being social helps to keep the old grey matter active, and the more social you are, the more of your brain you use. Loneliness is a silent killer, and while it’s primarily thought of as an older generation issue, this can be true for any age group. So playing video games involving others, even virtually, can help you use socialization to keep the brain healthy, feel connected, and ward off conditions like dementia or Alzheimers.
