Video Games Makes School Harder, Study Finds

The effect video games has on the minds of both young and old are one of the great mysteries of the world, largely in part because the brain itself is a mysterious blob of nerves and ooze that science barely understands. But like most things, we understand video games have both good and bad effects on the brain: they can improve coordination, spacial reasoning, boost confidence, and make us more social, but they can also cause addiction, aggression, and encourage bullying.

Mixed bag.

But now, thanks to some research funded by the fine folks in Northern Ireland and the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, we’ve stumbled upon some staggering new claims about the kinds of effects video games can have in the minds of the youths of the world. The kind of thing that could shake the industry to its core: according to a survey of 1000 bright young minds, test scores go down if you play video games instead of study.

I’ll give you a minute to scrape your brain off the walls.

The study specifically said that only 41% of students who used gaming devices regularly got high grades, while 77% of the students who played rarely got good scores. Now, all sarcasm aside, I don’t think anyone finds that to be horribly startling news… but this next part is fairly interesting.

This trend does not affect Social Media. Or, more specifically, between students who used social media frequently and those who used it rarely, their scores actually evened out, indicating it had no impact on their grades. So video games are fairly unique among time-wasters on computers, in that they actually can affect your grades. Interesting.

Now, this was a relatively small sample size, and it was done in Northern Ireland, so obviously this needs further testing before we can call anything certain, but for what it’s worth--I probably would have gotten better scores at University if League of Legends wasn’t in my life. So. There’s that.