“Get off that thing and do something productive!”

“You need a new hobby!”

“You should be doing sports!”
To any gamer, these are common sayings, whether it be from parents, grandparents, teachers or even friends.

Video games receive a lot of hate, even when considering that they are similar to many other hobbies that don’t involve physical activity, like writing or drawing. It seems as though just because our parents’ generation doesn’t understand them, that they hate them. It’s similar to when people thought books were evil. People even burned books from the 1650’s to the early 19th century because they thought they rotted the mind. What they did not understand, they hated. It’s the easiest and simplest thing to do. Obviously, the two things are different, but the cause behind both is strikingly similar.

What about all the studies suggesting that they cause violence? What about the fact that the boy behind the Columbine shootings named his gun after a book he read that was inspired by video games? Well, experts are suggesting that bias of researchers may be corrupting the data.

More recent studies suggest that video games actually have many benefits. The researchers report that video game play may “strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception,” rather than promoting a sort of intellectual laziness suggested by other people. The authors found this to be particularly true for popular first-person shooter games such as Call of Duty or Halo.

According to a report from www.natureworldnews.com, these shooting video games, although violent, “enhance a player’s capacity to think about objects in three dimensions just as well as an academic course designed to enhance the same skills would.” Benefits are around every corner, and the best part is, video games are fun!

So, parents, if you want the gamer in your family to give up their favorite hobby, you should try to instead understand things from their point of view.