Video Games: 3 Psychological Benefits You Never Would Have Guessed

Three positive mental aspects of playing video games.

Three positive mental aspects of playing video games.

Video games are linked to higher intellectual functioning in children, new research finds.

In addition, the more children played video games, the better adjusted they were at school.

The findings come from a study of children aged 6-11.

Researchers found no link between mental health and video game use.

They did find, however, that video game use was linked to better relationship with their peers.

Dr Katherine M. Keyes, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Video game playing is often a collaborative leisure time activity for school-aged children.

These results indicate that children who frequently play video games may be socially cohesive with peers and integrated into the school community.

We caution against over interpretation, however, as setting limits on screen usage remains and important component of parental responsibility as an overall strategy for student success.

Naturally, an association cannot show that computer games have a causative effect. Future research is required…

The study was published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology (Kovess-Masfety et al., 2016).

Video games image from Shutterstock


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Hello, and welcome to PsyBlog. Thanks for dropping by.

This site is all about scientific research into how the mind works.

It’s mostly written by psychologist and author, Dr Jeremy Dean.

I try to dig up fascinating studies that tell us something about what it means to be human.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits" (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks.