Who Said Gaming Is Bad? => It Increases Creativity

Despite all those bad talks about video games which makes you think that playing it is a sin, playing video games may actually boost creativity among boys and girls, independently of their violent or non-violent nature.A study of nearly 500, 12-year-olds found that the more they played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories.

The research out of Michigan State University, published online in the journal Computers in human behavior, suggests that of the 491 12-year-olds studied, the ones who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether those games are violent--and that the more they play, the more creative they are. Linda Jackson, professor of psychology at Michigan State University (MSU) and project leader, said the study appears to be the first evidence-based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity, the journal Computers in Human Behavior reports.About 72 percent of US households play video or computer games, says the Entertainment Software Association, according to a Michigan statement.

The MSU findings should motivate game designers to identify the aspects of video game activity that are responsible for the creative effects, Jackson said."Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimise the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment," Jackson said.

First, there is the issue of how one goes about measuring creativity. Jackson suggests this study provides the first evidence-based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity. Measuring technology use was easy. To measure creativity, her team relied on the "widely-used" Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, which involved having the kids perform various tasks, such as drawing pictures from a curved shape and then naming and writing stories about those pictures.Some of the resulting work was labeled "interesting and exciting," while other work was, well, not. So what does this tell us? That kids who play video games meet one set of criteria for creativity more than kids who don't.

The researchers surveyed 491 middle-school students as part of Michigan's Children and Technology Project. Regardless of gender, race or type of game played by the students, the study found a relation between video game playing and greater creativity.