Week 5

The reading that was most surprising to me this week was the one by Isabella Granic. I have always viewed playing video games to be an unproductive activity. It was interesting to see video-games can actually develop important skills of cognitive, social, emotional and motivation. The fMri studies that they cited such as the one that showed that people who played video games had a less active attention control allocation center while doing tasks that required activity, made me view video games in a completely new light.
Most of the study seemed to be studying the effects of video games on children and how they helped develop children. However, as the William et. al reading pointed out, majority of those who play these games are adults (58.97 per cent). How do we view video-games in this context? Are they helping adults learn and develop too? We don’t play other games that helped us develop in our childhood such as games of make-believe when we become older. What prompts people to continue/start playing video games?