Video games teaching real-life skills

Abstract

The motivation for this review came from the current immense popularity of video games and gaming culture, which is growing as the world becomes more technologically advanced. The selected research method for this study is a narrative literature review of existing literature on the topic of video games and their impact on personal skills and education over the past fifteen years.

This research established that video games could positively influence cognitive, social, and motivational skills, and have a significant role in educational settings. The potential negative impacts consist of reduced attention span, risk of addiction, and promotion of antisocial behavior such as introversion. This review contributes to the existing literature by providing a balanced perspective between the potential positive and negative effects of video games on personal skills while carrying some noteworthy limitations: the reliance on existing studies with varying methodologies, potential for a flawed selection of studies and the conciseness of this study.

Future studies should aim to address the gaps identified, particularly with long-term studies that track the impact of video games on personal skills over extended periods of time. It would also be beneficial to explore more deeply the relationship between video game content and specific cognitive and social outcomes. Research methods for this topic ought to become more advanced because it is difficult to control all the relevant variables when analyzing the impact of video games on personal skills and education, due to how even the subtlest variables can have substantive impact.