NORFOLK, Va. — Video games have been part of our lives for decades.
Kids and adults have been entranced by the glowing screen of new worlds, battles, and triumph; it’s an addiction that first began in the 1970s and early 1980s.
13News Now covered a story in 1981 when the arcade craze was igniting across the country.
Coin cabinet games like Galaga and Pac-Man were popping up in malls and stores... even Old Dominion University got its hands on a Pac-Man machine (lines started early in the morning for students hoping to get a chance to play).
Fast forward to today, and video games are just as popular, with people spending hours at home dialed in.
We even have video game bars like Circuit Social in Norfolk that let you relive the old arcade days of the past.
But many parents worry about what all the screen time is doing to their kids’ brains. A relatively new study out of the University of Vermont may put them at ease.
Researchers took a group of 2,000 kids and split them into video gamers and non-video gamers.
They found the group that played at least three hours of video games a day showed “better cognitive performance involving response inhibition and working memory..” compared to the kids who didn’t game.
It doesn’t mean we should spend unlimited time playing video games in an effort to increase brain function.
However, the research does suggest one of our favorite past times isn’t as bad for us as we originally thought.