Parents, the next time your child wants to play one more level of a video game, it might be a good idea to let them. Children who play video games every day show improved cognitive skills compared to children who don’t play video games at all, according to a study published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
“Video gaming may be associated with improved cognitive abilities involving response inhibition and working memory and with alterations in underlying cortical pathways,” the study reads.
Researchers with the University of Vermont in Burlington looked at brain activity data of about 2,000 children between 9 and 10 years old beginning in 2019. They said they believe the study to be “the largest study to assess the association among video gaming, cognition and brain function.”
The children were split into two groups: Those who never play video games and those who play three or more hours a day — exceeding the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ recommendation of less than two hours of screen time per day.
The groups were then given two tasks. The first task asked the children to press left and right arrow keys as fast as those keys appeared on a screen. A “stop” sign was also shown, and children were told not to press any buttons for this, to test inhibition control. The second task was a memory game where the children were shown images of people’s faces. After a time, the children were shown a similar image and were asked if the picture was of the same person or not, testing working memory.
While the children performed these tasks, their brains were monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The children who played video games showed more brain activity while performing these tasks.
While the study controlled for variables like sex, age and socioeconomic status, other factors, like amount of exercise and sleep, were not taken into account.
It’s also unknown what genres of video games the children were playing, or if the games were single-player or multiplayer. The study notes that these factors could have different effects on developing minds, and this information would be good to include in future studies.
Despite these limitations, researchers wrote that their findings are “consistent with video gaming being associated with better performance on cognitive tests.”
The researchers believe that more data could help determine whether video games affect other cognitive functions.
For more on games, check out the games to play with your kids, games for your kids to play that are secretly educational and the best games for the holiday season.
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