Office of Primary Care and Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Program

Bader Chaarani, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry

(OCTOBER 15, 2024) Bader Chaarani, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, was interviewed by FastCompany for a story on how playing video games in childhood can boost your income as an adult.

New research suggests that some time spent gaming can help develop kids’ teamwork, decision-making, and strategy skills.

According to a recent survey of 1,000 Americans by educational game maker Prodigy Education, those who played video games growing up were 71 percent more likely to have received a promotion recently. They also earn $5,451 more on average annually than non-gamers.

Despite their past association with social isolation, violent behavior, and underachievement, most adults who played video games as children or teenagers say it helped develop their strategic thinking, problem-solving, hand-eye coordination, and boosted their creativity, while offering a source of relaxation and fun.

The survey builds on a growing body of academic research that not only refutes the stigmas once attached to gaming, but suggests the medium is a positive contributor to early-skills development. That’s not only true for explicitly educational-gaming content, but age-appropriate video games of all kinds. 

One such study published in the National Institutes of Health explored the impacts of digital media on the brain development of 12,000 adolescents across the United States. Study participants were asked to engage with a variety of digital media while under an MRI scanner, and then given a series of tests to measure skills like memory recall, response inhibition, and reward processing.

“We found that video gamers have increased activity in an area of the brain called the precuneus, which is involved in everything related to vision, spatial memory, problem-solving, and attention,” said Chaarani, the lead author on the study. “It basically means that these video gamers are more efficient in terms of working-memory processing.”

There is, however, a tipping point after which the benefits of video gaming on cognitive development gets overshadowed by negative consequences. Chaarani is currently working on a yet-to-be-published study that attempts to find what he calls a “sweet spot.”

“Children who play around one hour per day have increased IQ, less or no mental health problems, and they do better on all the cognitive tests compared to non-video gamers,” he says. “After three hours [per day], we start seeing mental health problems and lower IQs.”

Based on his latest research, Chaarani recommends parents limit their children to one hour or less per day, and always prioritize physical activity over any sort of screen time.