Video Games for Seniors?

While the average age of gamers today is 32, there’s a good argument to be made that Seniors might be the gamers of the future.

Daphne Bavelier says that action packed shooter games have some positive effects on your body and brain.

• Vision is better. You can resolve small detail like the small print on many items.
• You can resolve different levels of grey – like foggy days driving the car.
• Your attention seems to get better – the ability to track multiple items.

It’s interesting that this increased attention does not help with multimedia-tasking.
Driving and talking on the phone is still a bad thing to do.
Even if you think you’re good at multimedia-tasking – you’re really terrible.

Daphne also makes the point that too much video game play is not good. She makes the point that a glass or two of wine every day might be good for your health, but two or three bottles a day would probably be bad.

Finally, Daphne is trying to get the entertainment industry to come out with games that are not only entertaining, but also have the elements that would help the brain.

Here are some other studies on the benefits of electronic games

• Wii – sports for coordination – surgeons

Here’s the video on Ted Talks.”Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games”