Pros - video games are good!

Pros- violent video games are good!

       Playing violent video games boosts children's learning, health, and learning skills according to American Psycoholgist research. According to Isabella Granic, PhD at Radbound University says that "important research has already been conducted for decades on the negative effects of gaming, including addiction, depression, and aggression, and we are certainly not suggesting that this should be ignored...however, to understand the impact of video games on children's and adolescents' development, a more balanced perspective is needed." Playing video games may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as navigation, reasoning, memory and perception skills. A 2013 meta-analysis found that playing video games improved a players capacity to think about objects in three dimensions just as well as academic courses designed to enhance these same skills. Also playing video games may also help children develop problem solving skills. The more adolescents reported playing strategic videos games, such as role-playing games, the more they improved in problem solving and school grades the following year according to a long-term study published in 2013. When playing video games, the youth allows themselves to learn about the possible consequences of their harmful actions. Since the kids are able to see the results of particular violence with their enemies in the game, they would think that it should not be done in real life. It also teaches them how to accept defeat especially when they loose to someone better than them in a game.


Facts:
- The authors of angry birds also highlighted the possibility that video games are effective tools for learning resilience in the face of failure
- By learning to cope with ongoing failures in games, the authors suggest that children build emotional resilience they can also rely upon their everyday lives
- Multiplayer games become viral social communities where decisions need to be made quickly about whom to trust or reject and how to lead a group
- People who play video games even if they are violent that encourage cooperation that are more likely to be helpful to others while gaming than those who play the same games competitively a 2011 study found

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/02/video-game.aspx


-Helps in expressing aggression and establishing their peer group
- Able to release whatever aggression they have through a game
- Allows themselves to learn about the possible consequences of their harmful actions; since the kids are able to see the results of particular violence with their enemies in the game, they would likely think that it should not be done in real life
- Learns how to accept defeat especially when they lost to someone better than them in the game

http://healthresearchfunding.org/video-game-violence-pros-cons/

- Video games are therapeutic for children with chronic illness
   - University of Utah released a study that examined the effects of regular gaming on children diagnosed with illnesses like autism, depression, and Parkinson's disease
   - Kids who play certain games shows signs of improvement in many fields
   - Researchers believed the games' ability to act on neuronal mechanisms that activate positive emotions and the reward system and that helped improve kids' demeanors as they faced the daily challenges of their illness
- Video games reduce stress and depression
   - 2009's Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedince included a study that found that gamers who suffered from mental health issues such as stress and depression were able to vent their frustration and aggression by playing video games
   - Hypothesized that games give a certain "type A" personalities
   - Time to relax in "a state of relative mindlessness"
- Video games provide pain relief
  - Not only provides relief from emotional pain but also physical pain
  - Psychologists at University of Washington developed a game that helps hospital patients suffering from immense physical pain by using an age-old trick; distraction
- Video games improve your decision-making skills
   - Most video games require fast reaction and slip-second decisions that can mean the difference between virtual life and virtual death
   - Cognitive neuroscientists at the University of Rochester in New York found that these games give players' brains plenty of practice for making decisions in the real world

http://theweek.com/articles/466852/7-health-benefits-playing-video-games