Seems some folks are finally getting around to realizing that video games teach many valuable cognitive skills.

When I was a kid, during the age of the arcade game, the one benefit people defending video games had in their arsenal was an improvement in “hand-eye coordination”. Videos games do that, of course, but it’s not the sort of thing to win people over, because to most people, that just sounds like you are saying “video games make you better at video games”. No duh.

Even simple arcade games do more than that. They teach you important lessons like perseverance, concentration, abstract object mastery, rapid thinking, and countless others. I truly think my lifelong video game habit has made my brain faster, stronger, and more flexible than otherwise.

What people fail to realize is that all videos are mental stimulation. Playing a video game is a high-intensity cerebral activity. People who think video games are somehow “mindless” have clearly never played one, and are simply responding to the surface media image of a video game player appearing zombie-like as they play a game because their attention is absorbed in the game. I’d point out, though, that any mentally engrossing activity gives the same impression of “mindlessness”, including composing a symphony or reading Nietzsche.

Being the mentally hyperactive intellectual sort, I need video games for the mental exercise they provide. Nothing else comes close to providing the sort of mental workout that a video game can. That’s why so many people are turning to brain-oriented video games in order to remain alert and sharp into old age these days. The science is finally backing up what ever gamer has known intuitively for decades : far from being mindless, playing a video game can be the most “mindful” thing a person ever does.

And because there is such variety in the world of video games, every gamer can seek out the games that emphasize their own cognitive strengths. In this way, video games also teach confidence and self-esteem by providing the gamer with an area through which they can prove to themselves that there are thing they excel at, challenges they can meet, mountains they can climb. Through video games, people can learn a great deal about themselves.

And as video games grow more complex and sophisticated, so do the lessons and skills learned from the games. While a simply arcade blaster might teach persistence and hone reflexes, a game like The Sims teaches a great deal about resource management, life choices, and human interaction on a basic level. A complex empire-building game like Civilization teaches history, strategy, economics, and a host of other deeply complex and intricate skills. Even a simple word game or puzzle game might teach deep abstract reasoning skills and problem solving skills.

All video games are mind games, exercise for the grey matter. Different people will find different games to be their cup of tea, but there’s something in the world of video games for nearly all kinds of intellect. It should come as no surprise to anyone but the mainstream media that all that mental exercise does a brain good.

I think that once we get over this idea that video games are a mindless entertainment, we can begin to unlock the true potential of video games as a learning tool. Practically any mental skill can be taught using video games as the model. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people will be learning their harmonic scales by blasting away at space ships with notes on them (though honestly, that would be cool), but the idea should be to teach via the high-speed high-stimulation instant-reward method that video games use so well that they convince people by the billions to spend time and money for what is essentially a learning tool.

One of the biggest and most destructive lies of the modern era is that children do not want to learn and have to be forced to learn anything. Children love to learn. Watch a child at play and you will see a child exploring their environment and manipulating their toys in a constant search for the kind of mental stimulation we call “amusement”. Call it what you like, but that child is trying to learn, and the beauty of it is, they’re doing it for the sheer joy of it. Nature has made us lifelong curious learners, and it is only through our massive folly that we someone convince our youngsters that learning is boring and onerous and inane.

Children love to learn. What they hate is being made to sit still, be quiet, listen to some adult drone on and on, and in general be caged up. We treat children like factory units, to be shuttled about and stuffed full in the most unnatural and counter-human way we can. We take that inborn love of learning that comes from being a curious and cerebral species and smother it with out rigid ideas of what education means.

Video games, in this content, offer great insight and illumination into how children truly want to learn. They want high-stimulation high-reward low-delay education that gives them as much as they can take and no more, when they want it, how they want it. Is this so radical a notion? Are we so bitter towards the young that we insist that nothing but the suffering we endured is acceptable? Does the prospect of making education easier and more fun for kids enrage our own inner children so much that we reject the idea out of hand, benefits be damned?

Hopefully, in the future, we will abandon our old factory education ideals and concentrate on whatever gets the best results. I think a video game based education model could go a long way to completely destroying the idea that “I hate school!” is the normal and natural attitude of all children, and that education is a long process of forcing medicine down children’s throats, not the joy-filled happy lifelong adventure it should be.

Tags: cognition, cognitive development, education, mental exercise, video games