Video Games Promote Creativity

With around 72 percent of American households playing video games, the effects video games on the players is important to research and uncover. Although a recent study shows that playing violent video games is likely to make the player temporarily more violent, more recent research indicates that video games, whether violent or not, causes an increase in the players' creative abilities. The study involved 500 12-year olds who played at different amounts of video games. The kids who played more video or computer games scored better in tests that required them to draw pictures and fabricate stories. The important thing for the researchers to do now though is to find out specifically what about the video games makes the players so much more creative and use that knowledge to enhance and perfect the creativity-honing process. The end goal is to "blur the distinction between education and entertainment." On a side note, boys tended to tell more violent stories and stories about sports, and girls were more likely to tell stories about games and interactions with others. Perhaps this is an indication as to what games each gender is more likely to play. Interestingly, browsing the internet and using the computer for purposes other than video games did not have an effect on the subjects' creative abilities.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111102125355.htm