Video games can boost children’s intelligence

Well, this is not the answer many of us would expect, and it goes against other logic of spending more time doing other things such as reading or socialising with friends (which the science also says is extremely beneficial to developing brains).

So, what did these researchers from the Karolinska institute in Sweden find and how did they find this?

The researchers around Bruno Sauce surveyed 5’000 children in the USA between the ages of nine and ten. They conducted a battery of tests, including cognitive and intelligence tests. Their parents were also asked about the children’s screen time and how much they spent on various activities. There was then a follow up 2 years later.

They found that those that spent most time on video games increased their intelligence by, on average, 2.5 points (or about 2.5%). There was no significant effect observed for TV or social media usage (positive or negative). In case you’re interested the average for these 5’000 children was 2.5 hrs of TV per day, half an hour on social media and an hour playing video games. I imagine there was a large variation in that. Remember these were between the ages of nine and ten at the outset of the study.

So, what to make of this?

Firstly, on closer inspection that playing video games increases intelligence shouldn’t be such a large surprise. Playing games requires multiple cognitive resources and is an active activity, in contrast to the passive activity of watching TV, with social media somewhere in the middle.

Secondly, it also shows that intelligence is a more a fluid concept than many think. With active use of cognitive resources intelligence does and will increase – this is an important, if not the most important, take away from this study.

However, a big caveat is they didn’t measure other aspects which we know will be important such as wellbeing, physical activity, or school performance, all of which can be critical factors in a child’s life and healthy development.

Of note also is that the hours of engagement with video games seem reasonable.

So, allowing kids to play video games, if they so wish, for reasonable amounts of time, is in fact a good thing and has benefits over simply watching TV. It isn’t a free card either – other things do count such as physical activity and nutrition which I have also written about multiple times here.

It might also do some of us oldies a bit of good as well!