Video Games as Stress Relief

Being what generally qualifies as an old-school gamer I can say with some authority that, back in the day (the late 70s early 80s) it was a very common experience among serious young gamers to hear one or more often both parents eschew them to get off of the couch / out of their room and do something in that big room with the large blue ceiling.

The basic position of the parental units back in the day - and it is not very likely that this position has changed any since then - is that video games are a waste of time or at best the last thing you should be doing since there are so many other things that are better that you could be doing.

Claims like those video games are pointless, will never lead anywhere, have no benefits, and are probably unhealthy were common enough, and really with the very limited position that they held back then, there was not much that we could say to refute those claims.

So we ended up going outside or at least we tried to pay some recognition to the parental wants. Today it is a different landscape entirely.

While the parental arguments range in severity, the easiest to counter is the one about games being a waste of time and are unhealthy.

Thanks to a slew of academic and laboratory studies over the course of the last thirty years there are some new arguments that you can offer in rebuttal to the parental unit - specifically in terms of the benefits of gaming, of which it seems there are several.

Gaming, it has been established, is an excellent stress reliever - in fact it has almost therapeutic levels of stress relief!

Not only that, but it also provides decided benefits in improving hand-eye coordination and motor skills in general, emotional stability in terms of countering depression, and has proven benefits in helping to alleviate chronic pain.

Recently it has been shown that regular (daily) gaming sessions also improves attention span, information retention, and decision-making skills. It is also said to help with issues of happiness in old age -- as in older people now turn to video games for recreation with very positive results!

Now those general observations give you a few clues but clearly you are going to need more precise ammunition if you plan on using them to counter your parental unit (and increasingly significant-other-units) when they make their anti-game observations, so you should probably take notes.