Here's What Scientists Think Video Games Are Actually Doing To Our Brains

Are video games and other screen technologies “rewiring” people’s brains, as media reports suggest? We asked five psychologists and neurologists.

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

If you read the newspapers, you may get the impression that video games and other forms of digital technology are damaging our brains. They cause aggression and "deviant behaviour"; they cause dementia, may be linked to attention deficit disorder and are "taking away our sense of reality".

But is any of this true? We asked five neurologists and psychologists with an interest in the topic.

"There isn't any evidence that there are any harms inflicted on young people, or adults. But there is lots of evidence that hints at potential risks, studies that say we need to look more closely at this or that we need to do more work. It's hard to establish whether video games cause aggression. Violent video games are fun. We did an experiment in which we modified the game Half-Life 2, to make it either more or less violent, and looked at whether people enjoyed the game more. We found that people who were already in an aggressive state of mind were more likely to want to carry on playing the violent version than people who weren't, while people who weren't feeling aggressive found the violence a turn-off.

"We need to think about these risks in context. With games, we're talking about a worst-case scenario of a single-digit percentage increase in aggression. That is, if you ignore all the other factors, social background, gender, education and so on, then on an aggression-measurement percentage scale of 0-100 playing violent video games might increase your score by four percent. Conversely, if you have a positive experience of playing video games, it increases your score on scales of things like social connectedness by 10 or 15.

"There are reasons to think that there might be risks, but there are so many other things that definitely cause harm. There's lots of evidence that lead damages brain development, for instance, and lots of countries still have leaded petrol. The focus on video games' small, possible harms is disproportionate."

Rockstar Games / BuzzFeed

---

View Entire List ›