Video Games for Health

While taboo is too strong of a word, accepting is equally not the correct view. Depending on the position taken, however, one usually finds them self leaning too far in either direction to call video games anything other than a pastime or a waste of time. Contrary to commonly held beliefs health and wellness can be markedly improved from the application of gaming. These video games can be rewarding on many levels; increased critical thinking and puzzle-solving abilities, increased reflexes and vision, even reaching so far as to having positive physical health including rehabilitation applications.
There is a reason that simple wooden puzzles, shape blocks and coloring books are staples in house with children or in a classroom. They build a level of cognizance that opens children up to more complex scenarios. Be it a Rubik’s Cube, Sudoku or the Tower of Hanoi – each of these devices or principles has an equivalent mental exercise in a digital video game format and can be one of these more complex scenarios for children and adults. Recent research (Baniqued et al., 2014) found improvements across all test subjects with individuals at a low reasoning baseline showing larger gains in multiple areas as a direct result of video game based puzzles designed around memorization and critical though application.
Bavelier (2012) explains multiple levels of health benefits and finds some commonly held beliefs to not be factual. Firstly, that an increased amount of time in front of a video game will have a negative impact on eyesight or vision in general. It was discovered that an average person, classified with vision as corrective-to-normal, actually has worse vision then that of an active video game player, measured in two distinct ways....

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..., but used reasonably and at certain ages could potential see benefits. Just as the resveratrol and antioxidants present in red wine have aided in changing perception in regards to the negatives with red wine, so too can the proven increase in learning, attention and brain elasticity alter the perception of video games.

Works Cited

Baniqued, P. L., Kranz, M. B., Voss, M. W., Lee, H., Cosman, J. D., Severson, J., & Kramer, A. F. (2014). Corrigendum: Cognitive training with casual video games: points to consider. Frontiers in psychology, 5.
Bavelier, D. (2012, June). Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games
Park, C. (2013). Intelligent Workload Control for Exercise Game. In HCI International 2013-Posters’ Extended Abstracts (pp. 618-622). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.