Healthy Video Games

The video-game industry won a minor battle this week when a California judge shot down a state act prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children, ruling that the proposed law was too broad and that, in any case, there was insufficient evidence showing such games have a negative effect on kids.

But while politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger may be doing their best to propose ways of limiting children's exposure to games in which torture and murder are commonplace, more and more studies are emerging that show that video games may be the opposite of destructive – that they may, in fact, be downright good for you.

Take, for instance, a study released earlier this year by researchers at the University of Rochester. They found that those who devoted about an hour of their time one day a week to playing the high-action, first-person shooter game Unreal Tournament scored not just all kinds of virtual game points, but also achieved higher scores in vision tests than did a control group of people who played the simpler, puzzle-based video game Tetris. Those findings were probably no surprise to the researchers behind a 2002 article in the British Medical Journal that listed spatial visualization as well as improved social skills as among the genuine benefits of video games.

And it's not just eyesight that seems to improve as players hone their gaming skills. A study published by researchers at Toronto's York University last year showed evidence that video-game players – not unlike bilingual speakers – tend to score higher in various, relatively difficult, mental tests than do non-players.