Discover the many benefits of gaming online, both cognitive and otherwise.
What are cognitive skills?
Before we take a look at how online video games can help improve cognitive skills it’s important to define and understand what these skills are. Cognitive skills also known as functions or abilities are mental skills, or to put in another way skills that are performed in the mind.
There are 8 key cognitive skills that human beings display to a higher or lesser degree including:
- Visual Processing,
- Divided Attention,
- Long-Term Memory,
- Working Memory,
- Sustained Attention,
- Selective Attention,
- Logic and Reasoning,
- Auditory Processing.
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Why are cognitive skills important?
Cognitive skills are important for almost everything we do in life, including our ability to survive. Indeed, our ability to successfully understand input from multiple stimuli (divided attention) and then assess the risk each one poses keeps us alive. Similarly, learning as a child (long-term memory) and being able to recall that sharp things such as shattered glass can cut and cause pain help to keep us safe throughout the whole of our lives.
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What are the cognitive benefits of playing video games online?
The good news is that these skills are things that we can improve on with sustained effort. One method of getting better at certain cognitive skills is to play a video game that trains you on that specific function. Indeed, certain types of games can be particularly good for boosting certain cognitive skills, for example:
- Visual Processing – Playing online first-person shooters like Valorant
can help boost your visual processing skills as you’ll need to up your reaction time to whatever is on the screen to get good.
- Long-Term Memory – Playing online RPGs like Final Fantasy can help boost your long-term memory skills as you’ll need to remember the world maps and where all the important locations are to succeed.
- Working Memory – Playing online card or board games like Backgammon can help boost working memory. This is because you’ll need to hold your game strategy in your mind, along with your status, and your opponent’s status all at the same time.
- Selected Attention- Online action games like RDR2 Online can help you get better at ignoring irrelevant distractions like trees and birds, and picking out the important things like lurking enemies, improving selective attention.
- Logic and reasoning – Online strategy games like Age of Empires Two can help players increase their logic and reasoning skills as they must consider the impact of their actions both in the short and over the long term as well as decide the best course of action to take.
What are the additional benefits of playing video games?
In addition to boosting cognitive skills, online gaming can also offer a range of other benefits
Mood
The first of these is mood. Online gaming can be a great way to improve movement because succeeding at gaming tasks such as completing a mission, winning a round, or finishing a quest can lead to a dopamine release in the brain.
To that end, if you are looking for a fast and relatively healthy (gaming addictions aside) way of feeling happier in the moment, then online gaming can provide a good solution.
Social
Online gaming is incredibly social as well, with many games promoting teams, and guilds that use websites and platforms like Discord to communicate and create community outside of, as well as inside of the game. Friendships made in-game online can last a lifetime too! After all, what better way to bond with someone than to fight with them side by side and overcome all the obstacles that your online environment challenges them with?
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In addition to the social aspects of online gaming mentioned above, they are a great way of teaching teamwork and effective communication. This is because to succeed in many games you have to work with others, and so be able to effectively communicate your needs and wants to them.
There are also different levels of connection and communication in online gaming ranging from full in-game voice chat which you can access on the PS5, to the limited connection of visiting another player’s voice on Animal Crossing. Indeed, Nintendo, the game developer of Animal Crossing New Horizons, has carefully considered its target market of young children and designed a social and communication mechanism around them that allows them to enjoy content from others while ensuring there are plenty of safeguards in place to protect their identity and safety.
Relaxation
Last of all, when it comes to benefits that are not directly related to cognitive skills, it’s important to point out that many people choose to play online games to help them relax. Indeed, online gaming can be very similar to reading a fiction book, as you get to immerse yourself in a fantasy world, with you as the protagonist. In this way you truly get to escape your own reality for a while, and the stresses and strains that go along with it. The idea is that once you return to real work you are more rested and refreshed and able to deal with the challenges your life has for you. However, if you have a particularly stressful session this may not always be the case!
Are the cognitive benefits of playing online video games short or long-term?
The short answer to the question is that the benefits of playing online video games can be both short and long-term. For example, boosted mood tends to be a short-term benefit in that you feel happier directly after you have played a game online.
However, some of the cognitive skill benefits that can be gleaned from playing games online may last longer. After all, the theory of neuroplasticity states that by practising something over and over we can change the pathways in our brain, and make long-term changes in terms of our memory, attention and reactions. Indeed, it seems to follow that the more you play a certain game, the longer the cognitive skill that it trains will last.
How you can use online video games to improve your cognitive skills
Now you know that online games can help boost your cognitive skills, it’s time to look at how you can go about using them to this effect. First of all, it makes sense to choose a game which helps boost the skills you need to use in real life.
For example, playing a driving game can help you improve your visual processing, divided attention, working memory, sustained attention, selective attention and auditory processing skills. You can then apply these to real-world situations in which you are in control of a vehicle.
However, it is important to note that online games are limited in terms of how much they can teach you and improve your cognitive skills.
For instance, a driving game may help boost the skills you need to make you a good driver, but unless it’s a complex simulation it cannot teach you how to drive. Additionally, such a game may only be able to improve your cognitive skills so much before you plateau and may need input from a real-world source.
How to measure your cognitive improvement
If you want to be scientific about whether you experience any cognitive improvement by playing a certain online game, it can help to test and measure your progress. This means finding a test for the skill you are looking to improve online such as working memory. Then you do this test a few times before you play your game and record the average of the results.
The next step is playing the game, and once you have done that you can go back and do the test again a few times and record the average results. Once you have done that you can compare your results to see whether playing the game had a positive impact on your performance.
Of course, to keep things as scientific as possible you must control as many variables as you can. This means making sure you take the same test, on the same device, in the same room, and at the same time of day. Even with rigorous controls other factors could influence the performance of your cognitive skills such as what you have eaten for breakfast, how tired you are, and whether anyone else is present so it’s a good idea to take the results of this experience with a pinch of salt.
Final thoughts
In summary, cognitive skills are varied and crucial to human success and development. Playing online games can be a way to work on developing particular cognitive skills, and some of these effects can be over the long term. It’s even possible to run informal tests to ascertain the effect of a specific game.
However, in addition to the cognitive benefits of playing online games, there are other advantages to be accessed including mood improvement, social skills, community, and relaxation.
To that end, online gaming should be seen as a worthwhile endeavour whether you are aiming to hone your cognitive skills, or just enjoy yourself with your friends online.
