Do video games affect cognitive abilities of brain in young children? Here’s what research says

Video games have been blamed repeatedly for making a negative impact on the physical and mental health of young children. Due to video games, children who must do physical activities and play on the ground have stopped going out of their homes.

On the other hand, until now, video games have also been said to affect the brain and thinking power of children in a negative way. However, the latest results of research conducted by leading scientists across the world indicate a completely different outcome.

And, it is a sigh of relief for parents who have been constantly worried about their children playing video games for hours together that may possibly result in some unhealthy effect on their mental health.

Jie Zhang, a professor at the University Of Houston College Of Education has said that their studies have shown no impact of video games on children after they played them for long hours.

The research was conducted on 170 students from urban areas with a regular habit of spending hours on video games. Researchers tried to look for any connection between students’ playing video games and their ability to perform in the standardized cognitive ability test or CogAT. It did not take into consideration the grading system usually used by teachers to evaluate the performance of a student in a particular subject.

The result showed that neither the duration of the video game play nor the type of content or genre of the game made any impact on the CogAT measures of the students.

On the other hand, the study also revealed something very interesting. Just as there are video games for entertainment, many content producers have also developed video games for the healthy mental development of children.

However, the study revealed that even such games did not have any impact on the cognitive abilities of the children.