We fear the unknown. For decades, technology has been making us ponder about the future of robots, flying cars, and teleportation portals. All in all, technology has taken an important place in human existence. It makes us wonder again whether the technology-driven fears are valid.
Currently, the age at which an individual becomes exposed to technology is decreasing. Toddlers and kindergarteners watch YouTube on their tablets. School children text their parents and friends via smartphones, and teenagers play computer games on laptops and PCs.
The younger the child is, the easier it is to supervise them. Teenagers are the most challenging category when it comes to monitoring the amount of time they spend playing video games. But are computer games that dangerous at all?
Know Your Enemy
Education is a direct step towards a better life. Yet, no wonder that modern parents worry about the academic performance of teenagers. If you found your child, a friend, or sibling constantly browsing Insider.Games or any other site with gaming rig reviews, you may think of game addiction.
Being drawn to PC gaming is not a problem unless a gamer feels irritability and anger when not spending enough time playing. Game addicts often lie about the amount of time dedicated to playing. Moreover, they think about engaging in this activity on a constant basis.
Nonetheless, you should not worry that PC gaming negatively affects the academic performance of a teenager you know. According to the relevant study, only 1.4% are truly addicted gamers, while others just enjoy playing. Hence, the chances that you or your acquaintance suffer from gaming addiction are very low.
Computer Games Relieve Stress
School overload is growing nowadays, putting modern teenagers under constant pressure and exhaustion. If left untreated, stress caused by extreme academic overload leads to mental problems. In case you wonder how a teenager can relieve stress caused by hard studying, consider playing computer games.
Good memory, attention, and perception constitute mental health and influence academic performance. Meanwhile, playing puzzle and strategy games, which you can find on Insider Games, requires good memorizing skills and paying attention to details. You also need to react to the opponents’ moves and changes in the game story quickly. As a result, all these actions improve a teenager’s memory, perception, and attention.
While relieving stress, a teenager learns to make better decisions during the game. A significant segment of games is all about strategy. Because your main goal in the majority of modern games is to defeat the enemy, effective decisions are a top priority.
Developing strategies is like playing chess. You should guess the possible steps of your opponent and keep a few scenarios and backup plans if your moves do not work. Sounds like math, doesn’t it? But in comparison to math, a subject that rarely teaches critical thinking or strategy, PC gaming does. And it’s not boring at all!
Being Academically Smart Equals Being “Gamingly” Efficient
When it comes to gaming, you live a second life in the vast digital world. You may not be the most popular kid at school, but the gaming world gives you a supportive environment. For instance, the Insider Games fan community offers tons of useful information and helps develop skills you can use in daily life.
Unfortunately, modern education seldom focuses on teaching teenagers the difficulties of real life. But before you even download Minecraft or League of Legends, you are already prepared for the challenges a player needs to overcome. Once you win the game, your confidence level rises. The next time a new challenge in the form of an English test comes, you are already ready for it.
Whether you develop complex strategies in action games to improve your memory or solve problems in puzzle-based games to increase your attention span, gaming teaches you the importance of well-thought-out decisions.
At the same time, action games like Dota 2 or Battlefield require teamwork. If you are too shy to socialize in school, gaming is a great alternative. It allows you to gain effective social skills and boost confidence.
Computer Games as Part of School Curriculum
It is a promising perspective. Of course, in the world of the future, computer games may become a part of the school curriculum. But since the majority of parents are against gaming, computer games are still limited to playing in a teenager’s room.
If you doubt the benefits that computer gaming brings to a modern teenager, check the reliable statistics. One of the recent studies held in Australian schools has proved that playing computer games has its perks.
It allowed students to score 15% higher in reading and mathematics and 17% higher in science if compared to the scores of non-gamers.
Thus, students who played computer games had specific skills to do their homework quicker and more effectively.
Can computer games substitute traditional subjects? Not to the full extent. But they can make the learning process funnier and more effective. Big companies are already digging the opportunity. For instance, Minecraft: Education Edition allows school students to access educational content and gain basic school-level knowledge.
Studying world history through adventure games is definitely more exciting than reading about the most important political decisions in books. For instance, Valiant Hearts: The Great War will teach you the World War I battles and military strategies in a very engaging way. Plus, the locations of historical battles are colorful and give you an atmosphere of the twentieth century.
Other ideas are adding chemistry applications, which students can use to check the experiments before actually mixing ingredients in the lab, or learning digital art before applying for the degree.
Final Thoughts
Playing computer games equips a teenager with a set of skills necessary in academic surroundings. Gaming can improve one’s memory, attention span, and critical thinking skills, all required for excellent academic performance. If you become tired of studying too much, read an article about a newly released game on Insider Games to relieve stress and improve your mental health.