Despite the evolution of mentalities and the opening of the world of video games in our society, some assumptions persist about their impact on children. Undeniably, excessive practice can lead to addictions and deviant behavior, but games can above all be vectors of socialization and even have a positive impact on the motor skills and memory of children.
Children playing video games have better memory and motor control
This is what reveals to us this unprecedented study conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse based on the study Teenager Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) launched in 2018 in the United States on thousands of children.
Without concrete links being established concerning the improvement of the cognitive abilities of children playing video games, these results refute some received ideas and raise new questions.
Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said that “This study allows us to better understand the links between video games and brain development”.
In 2018, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study was launched on 2,217 children to study their brain development into adulthood. These children regularly passed various and varied tests based on the evaluation of brain imaging, cognitive tasks, the study of mental health or even physical health examinations.
The ABCD study separated children into two groups, those who played at least 21 hours a week and non-gamers who never played video games. Casual gamers were not included in the study.
After various tests measuring attention, impulse control and memory, the results showed that children playing video games had more sustained brain activity in areas of the brain involving attention and memory. It should also be noted that no difference was observed between the two groups in terms of mental health, refuting some widespread assumptions.
The concrete and detailed causes of this difference between the two groups of children have yet to be discovered. Video games could indeed improve children’s cognitive abilities, but there are two main biases. The first concerns the fact that children who already have better motor and memory skills could be more attracted to video games. The second concerns the type of video games children play, as this parameter is not taken into account in the study. Kirk Welker, a neuroradiologist at the Mayo Clinic, says that “great gaps in our knowledge on this subject persist” again.
In the long term, this study can still make it possible to work on beautiful innovations and in particular video games which would treat the cognitive problems of children. Akili Interactive is developing a prescription video game to treat ADHD. On the side of DeepWell Digital Therapeutics, it is a question of finding the therapeutic value of already existing games. In short, video games have a future and we hope to see innovations of this type develop to extend the positive impact of the video game industry on education and medicine, among others.
