Up till now, those who played video games or let their kids play computer games for hours had a guilt feeling that they were doing something detrimental to the mental health of their child or themselves. This was because experts till date were of the opinion that video games made players more aggressive and that kids development got hampered if they played excessively all those violent games on their gaming consoles or computers. For all such people, the results of a recent study linking video games with creativity may be very encouraging news.
The results of the study carried out in Michigan State University and published in an online journal called Computers in Human Behavior are contrary to what people have been led to believe so far about the effects of video gaming on the minds of kids. Researchers have concluded, on the basis of a study of 491 12 year old school going kids that kids tend to become more creative when they play more video games than when they are engaged in other activities. This was irrespective of the type of games played by the kids. This implies that playing violent video games is not all that bad for the health of the kids after all. In fact; and this is more surprising, the more the kids were made to play games, the more they became creative.
It is not the entire game but certain aspects of gaming
Head of this study, Linda Jackson, who happens to be a Professor of Psychology, is of the view that this encouraging result should motivate designers of video games to pay attention on the aspects of video games that made kids more creative and should work to create more games of those types. This in turn means that video games should be able to help in improving creativity levels in certain kids in future. This will no doubt make detractors of video games furious but the fact remains that this will help in blurring the distinction between gaming and education.
More studies to follow suit
There is no doubt that there would be many who would remain skeptical of this ability of video games. However, one can be pretty sure that this study would encourage many more to investigate the ability of gaming to help develop creativity in kids.
