Most people have the mindset that video games are bad.  They have this image that video games create violent thoughts and actions.  Or maybe they believe that people who play video games sit at their televisions all day and never go outside.  But this is not the case.  Video games are not all bad, and in fact are more for the better then for the worse.  Video games can do many positive things including improving your mental health and helping the economy.

Video games have been around as long as computers have, the two go hand in hand.  The first video games were not as immersive, so people didn’t play them as much.  But now with technology advancing more and more, people are able to spend more time on games and they can take longer to complete.  Many of the first video game players came from people with what is said to be similar hobbies.  Many board game and collectable card game players were the first to get really into gaming, as the screen could bring their fantasy characters and worlds to life, all without having to leave their room.  From its origins video games have been given a bad name, starting from things like this.

As technology advanced, so did video games along with it.  Eventually games could connect to the internet, and that gave players even less of a reason to leave their rooms, as they could play with others live from thousands of miles away.  As the internet became a larger part of life, more people were also exposed to video games and other like minded people, creating the ‘stereotype gamer’.  Another effect of the internet on gaming was now players could purchase additional content for their games, causing many to spend irrational amounts on what some consider worthless items in a computer game.

All of these factors and names have given video games a bad rap from their beginning.  But video games are in fact not bad at all.  Just because a gamer can play from their room doesn’t mean they can’t be healthy.  And players purchasing content does a lot more to help the economy than harm it.  Video games are beneficial to our society and will only become more so in the coming years.  More and more people are playing every day.

One aspect of gaming that is really beneficial is that of one health.  Video games really do a lot for ones mental and physical health.  One example of this is that video games have been shown to help your eye sight (National Geographic).  Video games do not strain your eyes, in fact they do the opposite.  A study was done that showed how players who play fast paced video games actually have better eye sight then those who don’t.  In order to preform in those games, players need to be able to see contrast between similar colors quickly, and they showed much better results then those who don’t play those games.  Being able to have better vision with contrasting colors can help out a lot, for instance driving at night.

 Video games are key to improving your mental health.  One way they do this is through decision making (WebMD).  A study was done that shows how faster paced video games have been shown to help decision making compared to both non gamers, and players of slower paced gamers.  When players are put in a higher pressure environment such as a shooter game, they have more motivation and incentive to make a choice more quickly and process that information faster.  Being able to make snap decisions is a helpful trait to have, and especially for those in the military or police force for instance.  Quick decision making is just one of the many benefits that comes with playing video games and one reason why video games are helpful to society.

One of the most common stereotypes about video game players is that they are antisocial.  The media portrays people who play online games as extremely an undesirable.  But this is not the case at all.  In fact, studies show that the majority of video game players are social, and the antisocial ones fall in the minority (CNET).  Since the appearance of the internet in video games, playing them is no longer a lonely experience.  People being able to chat and interact with others results in way more social stimulation then other comparable hobbies such as television.  In addition to the internet, video game players are able to communicate, interact, and meet other like minded people in other ways.  The expansion of video games has brought along tournaments, conventions, streaming and more.  All of this greatly enhances the socialness of video game players, improving their mental health and brain activity.  It’s important for everyone to be social and interact, and video games provide a way to do that for many people.

The most commonly known way video games are beneficial is that they help your hand eye coordination.  A study was done with training surgeons that showed this (Popular Science).  Both surgeons and people who play at least 2 hours of video games a day were tested on a virtual surgery machine.  Even though the surgeons had medical training, the gamers still scored better as a whole.  Video games have been shown to increase hand eye coordination because video games are all about quick reactions and nimble movement of the hands.  Improved hand eye coordination can help with being a surgeon as well as many other professions.  

Perhaps the greatest way video games help your mental health is by enhancing your learning ability.  People who play video games can learn, absorb, and understand material much more effectiveness (PLOS).  When playing any video game, specifically fast paced ones or strategy ones, you have to take in a lot of information.  The data has then to then be processed by your mind.  After that a decision has to be made and then you must act on that.  All of this requires a lot of brain power and function.  The increased cognitive ability that comes with a gamer results in both better hand eye coordination and decision making, as was discussed above.  As a whole video games help your brain, they don’t destroy it.  Video games are beneficial to society because they help in so many ways.

There are plenty more ways video games help your mental health.  One for instance is they help your attention span and focus (ILFScience).  It’s commonly thought that video games make your attention worse, but research shows otherwise.  A trial was done where people who play video games were compared against people who don’t play video games to try and detect patterns.  These experiment required participants to have lots of focus and patience in order to pick out the patterns.  As you might expect, the gamers scored better on this.  That is because video games do in fact require a lot of attention and focus to excel at.  In a game you will often have to solve puzzles that take a lot of time.  Also, you are often passing by the same area in a game or spending a lot of time there.  Doing long spans of similar levels takes a lot of focus and attention, improving gamers attention span and focus.  Video games beneficially help, because then in school and at work, players have been conditioned to be more focus and attentive.

Another way video games help is with depression and mental illness.  Contrary to the popular belief that video games cause these things, they actually help treat them or prevent them all together (BMJ).  Video games provide an outlet for being with violent thoughts.  A game is a much better place to take those out on rather than on one’s self or their family or friends.  Video games also provide a distraction for those with a more depressing life on the outside world.  The escape that video games provide are often the highlight of one’s life.  A video game was created called SPARX that was specifically designed to treat teenagers with depression.  The game let them take out their gloomy and depressed thoughts in the game rather than on people.  In a study where people who played the game as treatment were compared to those who had traditional counseling, the ones who played the game showed more improvement.  Video games provide an outlet for violent and sad thoughts, allowing people to overcome them, helping their mental health.  

On the other side of health benefits, video games can also help people’s physical health.  Most people think video games lead to obesity, laziness, and more.  The truth is, video games can help your physical health a lot more than people think (Science Daily).  Now all major counsels have fitness enhancements built into them.  Originally starting with the Wii, video game players can now be active and stay fit while playing games.  Since the Wii, both Xbox and PlayStation have added their own physical aspects to their respective systems.  Between sport games, party games and more plenty of video games keep players active and moving.  Playing an hour of an active video game a day was shown to be just as going for a walk.  Video games are also much healthier than similar hobbies due to this.  Compared to television or other sedentary comparisons, video games are a lot better for your physical health by keeping you moving and burning calories.  Video games are beneficial because they enable players to have fun while also staying healthy.  

Beyond the health aspects that video games help, they also do a lot more for the economy than most people realize.  Video games are becoming a huge and important part of the economy.  As technology advances, so does video games impact in the economy (NBC News).  Every year video games add billions to the economy.  The more the economy grows, the better it is for everyone, not just people who play or purchase video games.  The rate that the video game industry grows in the economy is faster than the United States economy as a whole.  Video games benefitting the economy is just one more reason that they do more good than bad.

One way that video games help the economy is they provide a lot of jobs.  The video game industry directly employees over 32,000 people and that number has been going up every year.  Most people that are in the video game industry are knowledgeable with technology and college educated, pushing students to strive for more schooling.  The increasing jobs in the video game industry is enhancing the education as a whole for our nation.  Video games also provide over 120,000 indirect jobs in the United States.  These are through video game stores, events, and anyone else that is involved with the process of creating, selling, or enhancing the experience of them.  Jobs related to video games are one of the fastest growing.  The average employee in the industry makes almost $90,000 annually.  This is far more than the average household income for our country, nearly double it.  Video games help provide high paying jobs that stimulate the economy.

In 2009 nearly $3 billion was provided to workers in the video game industry, making it one of the fastest growing and largest.  California employs the largest amount of people in the video game industry, and because of that adds over $2 billion to the economy every year.  Numbers like these are just one of the many reasons that video games are so beneficial to our society as a whole.  Beyond California, Texas and many other states have large video game industries, making it a nationwide economy (Huffington Post).  While in most industries, the amount of employs is lowering because of downsizing, in the video game industry the number is increasing more and more each year because as there is more technological innovation, there are more and more video games being developed.  Between providing jobs and growing the economy, video games really do help our nation as a whole beneficially.

Video games have always been given a bad name, and there is reason for that.  Society portrays the average gamer as obese, and they are not entirely wrong.  There is a higher rate of obesity among those who play video games compared to those who don’t (Obesity Forum).  This issue is most common in children, but it’s not the video games fault.  Just like anything, video games should be done in moderation.  If a parent lets their kid spend 4 hours a day on a screen, that is not healthy at all.  Less time behind the screen in addition to more time outside can help with the obesity epidemic without putting away with video games.  The video games are not at fault, it is more simply how they are being used.  The fault falls on the parent for allowing their kid to play too much.

One thing that people always correlate with video games is violence.  It’s happened multiple times on the news, where there is some kind of shooter and it turns out he played video games.  But this does not mean video games automatically cause violence and should be discontinued (CNN).  Firstly, not all video games are violent, in fact most of them are not.  There are plenty of games out there that do not involve fighting or violence of any sort.  Peaceful video games get the bad rap by being lumped with the big name violent games.  The issue of video games causing violence is because parents are letting their kids play violent games at too young of an age.  The age restrictions on games block younger kids from buying them, but not from playing them.  This results in the parents being at fault.  At a younger age kids should not be exposed to violent games, and then they should have to wait till they are older to play more violent ones.  Young children aren’t given access to drugs and alcohol, other age gated things, so why should video games be any different.  The other misconception about violence and video games is that they are what causes violence in teens, but that is not always true.  Violent and aggressive people are more inclined to go out and buy a violent game, not the other way around.  The media and society mix this up, saying the video games cause violence, but in fact this is often the other way around.  Video games would not be given such a bad name if people were to make this realization.  As with anything, there are downsides.  But the downsides of video games come from misconceptions and misuse of the games, and none of that is the fault of the video games themselves, more so the parents who buy them.

Video games impact your life, even if you don’t know it.  More and more people play them every day.  Whether it’s through the economy, a friend who plays them, or advertisements everywhere video games are growing in America.  Between the health aspects of them, and how they help the economy video games are in fact a good thing.  Even through the stereotypes and predispositions about them, video games are more beneficial than harmful. 
