Computer and video games are one of the most controversial forms of entertainment. Few of the ways of organizing
In a sense, it's easy to see why.happening. Surveillance of gamers from the outside can be alarming. It seems that they are glued to the screen and do not notice anything around. At best, it seems like a pointless exercise; at worst, it raises concerns that games are socially isolating or harmful to the psyche. But, if you understand and look at the studies, it turns out that everything is not so simple.
Virtual reality and the consequences of coronavirus
The COVID pandemic has changed the way people live.Various studies have shown that even after recovery, patients experience symptoms such as weakness, lethargy, post-traumatic stress disorder, dementia, shortness of breath and muscle wasting. These conditions adversely affect the quality of life of patients during and after their hospitalization, making recovery more difficult and lengthy.
Scientists from the Shiraz Medical UniversitySciences in Iran conducted a meta-analysis of 699 studies, including cross-sectional studies, randomized clinical trials and case reports. The work showed that the use of games in virtual reality has a positive effect on the rehabilitation of patients.
The use of virtual reality has improvedfunctional and cognitive performance of patients. In addition, most study participants reported increased satisfaction with their own quality of life. The researchers emphasize that the first results in the field of rehabilitation are preliminary, as it is only developing, but nevertheless very promising.
More games - higher IQ
European countries came to an unexpected resultresearchers. Contrary to popular belief that “computer games are stupefying”, scientists have shown that the IQ level of children who spent more time on games was higher than that of their peers.
As part of the study, researchers examined data onscreen time of 9,855 children aged 9 or 10 in the US. On average, they spent 2.5 hours per day watching TV or online video, 1 hour playing video games, and an hour online.
Two years after the first study, over5,000 of these children agreed to be retested. Participants were asked to complete tasks that included reading comprehension, visual-spatial processing, and a memory-oriented task, flexible thinking, and self-control.
It turned out that the participants who reportedthat spend more time playing video games than usual, there was an increase in IQ of 2.5 points compared to their peers. At the same time, TV viewing and social networks had neither a positive nor a negative effect.
The researchers note that they have not studied howscreen time affects physical activity, sleep, well-being and school performance. But the results support the contention that screen time generally does not impair children's cognitive performance, and that video games may indeed improve intelligence.
Are games addictive?
Gaming Disorder Is Really Recognizedaddiction. It was included in the latest edition of the International Classification of Diseases (11th ed.). But estimates of the actual number of people susceptible to this disease vary greatly.
In 2021, researchers conducted a meta-analysis onbased on 61 studies on the spread of video game addiction. The total sample included more than 220,000 people from 29 countries. The results showed that the overall prevalence of gaming disorder was 3.3%. At the same time, when scientists excluded works that did not fully satisfy the principle of representativeness of the study, this figure dropped to 2.4%.
Similar estimates a year earlier were obtained in anotheranalysis that combined 53 studies conducted between 2009 and 2019, which included 226,000 people from 17 countries. The worldwide prevalence of gaming disorder was 3.05% and this figure was adjusted to 1.96% when considering only studies that met more stringent selection criteria. At the same time, the gender ratio was 2.5:1 in favor of men (they were more likely to suffer from disorders).
Games, aggression and violence
It is widely believed that violentvideo games promote aggression, impair social behavior and increase impulsivity. In a study published in the journal Nature, a group of scientists decided to test this thesis.
They recruited three groups of participants, some fromwho were expected to play the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3, or give up video games altogether. All participants were randomly assigned to groups, and the testers did not know which group a particular participant belonged to.
They conducted a large-format study thatcovered many tests. Among other things, the researchers conducted questionnaires, used behavioral assessments of aggression, the development of sexist attitudes, the level of empathy, the development of interpersonal communication skills and mental health.
All tests were run twice:before the start of the study and after the completion of the two-month play period. The results did not reveal any significant change when comparing the violent video game group with the non-violent game group, or with the passive control group. In addition, all scores obtained before the start of the study roughly matched the scores collected after the end of the trial for all players.
Similar results were obtained by the Britishscientists who studied more than a thousand teenagers aged 14 and 15 who prefer violent video games. The results of all tests showed no connection between aggression in young people and passion for video games.
Video games are surrounded by a lot of myths, butmost of them do not stand up to scrutiny. Representative scientific studies show that games not only do not affect the level of aggression and desocialization, but in some cases, on the contrary, they can promote the development of communication and joint action skills, be used in education for better assimilation of information and treatment to restore physical activity and cognitive skills.
Read more:
See what a woman, a priest and a bishop looked like in the Middle Ages. Their faces are alive
Methane level in Nord Stream leak zone exceeds the norm by 1,000 times
Recreate the Sun on Earth: how physicists solved the main problem of thermonuclear fusion