A New Study Of American Children Found That Playing Video Games Might Actually Boost Intelligence

The team first discovered that the children spent an average of two and a half hours watching television every day.

The children also averaged one hour of daily video game time and a half-hour of daily social media access.

Shockingly, the children who spent more time playing video games exhibited higher intelligence scores by about two and a half IQ points.

Compared to television and social media, no significant intelligence effects were observed for those activities.

Torkel Klingberg, a cognitive neuroscience professor at the Karolinska Institutet, explained how this study did not analyze other mental and physical health effects.

“We did not examine the effects of screen behavior on physical activity, sleep, well-being, or school performance. So, we cannot say anything about that,” Professor Klingberg noted.

Nonetheless, he is confident that the study’s results support a positive correlation between video games and intelligence.

“Our results support the claim that screen time generally does not impair children’s cognitive abilities and that playing video games can actually help boost intelligence,” Klingberg added.

Aside from this perhaps shocking finding, the team’s study also supports new studies that intelligence is not fixed. Instead, it can be influenced by environmental factors.

This area of research is what Klingberg hopes to explore next. He shared that the team will “now be studying the effects of other environmental factors and how the cognitive effects relate to childhood brain development.”

To read the study’s complete findings, visit the link here.