All Things in Moderation

My first time using a computer was when I was 6 or 7 years old. That computer was completely different from the computers that we use today. The screen was just black and you need to input something for something to show up. It was like using the command prompt from computers nowadays. Computers then became smaller and faster as time passed by and it has become a big part in people’s lives.

I use the computer in every day of my life. Mostly to surf the internet and play computer games especially DotA 2. I have played the game for almost 6 years already. The game also changed as time passed by. Back then it was just called DotA, it was just a mod for the game Warcraft III. The game then became famous and Valve Corporation took intellectual property rights to DotA and developed a stand-alone sequel, DotA 2.

The game attracts gamers of all ages and I can say that it is quite addicting and can cause some problems with our daily lives. I’ve heard of students cutting classes just to play, couples breaking up because the boy wants to play, people forgetting to eat because they are playing, etc. But let us forget all of this and get to the most interesting part of playing computer games. Don’t you think that it is amazing how fast people can learn a video game is such a short time especially for students? Just give them a couple of hours playing a game and you will find them addicted to it but if you bring them to school to attend a few hours of class, they tend to fall asleep or not pay attention at all. There are many things that fascinate me about gamers and of them is their reaction time which is being reflected in their hand-eye coordination. They can move their fingers so fast that you can even compare it to a pianist’s.

I did a little bit of research to find out the effects video games to people and their brain and I can say that I am quite amazed. A study conducted by Daphne Bavelier showed that individual who play fast-paced, action-packed, shooting video games exhibit better performance in terms of vision, attention and cognitive processes than their non-gamer peers. These results might seem a bit different to what most people think about gamers like for example the vision and attention part. People might say that gamers have bad eye-sight because they expose their eyes too much on screen or maybe they are not very attentive because they are just thinking of the game they are playing. However, Bavalier’s study disproves it. Results of her study showed that these gamers can read smaller texts, they can do multitasking better and have enhanced top-down attention control.   

These abilities might be simple but they are very useful in our daily lives. For example, in reading drug prescriptions, you don’t need a magnifying lens to read it. Another example would be driving in a foggy road. The ability to see better will make a difference between life and death. Or maybe driving while talking to a friend, the ability to multitask will help this task easier.

Another study conducted by Kühn and others (2013) showed that video gaming causes increases in the brain regions responsible for spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning as well as fine motor skills. Thus, it can also be used to counteract known risk factors for mental disease such as smaller hippocampus and prefrontal cortex volume in, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disease.

        
Gaming can be seen as a training for a person’s cognitive and motor skills. It can help in training specific parts of our brain. However, too much video games can be harmful to our health and in very rare cases it can cause death. On February 23, 2012, a 20-year old man died due to a cardiac arrest after playing for 23 hours; and on July 13, 2012, an 18-year old man died after playing for 40 hours straight without any food.

Playing video games doesn't have to be a bad thing, if it's done with the proper amount of time.