The Many Social Benefits of Playing Video Games

A gamer holding an Xbox 360 controller.

I wrote this article as a research paper for one of my classes at LCCC and recently published it on HubPages because I thought parents of gamers and younger gamers might find it interesting and informative. Since this blog covers video game related topics, I thought it would be useful to share it with my readers here. This article covers how video games may help children to learn valuable social skills. In this article, I discuss how multiplayer and co-operative video games can be particularly useful in helping individuals on the autism spectrum develop social skills.

The Many Social Benefits of Playing Video Games

Introduction

Though video games have become a popular pastime for children and adults alike in recent years, negative stereotypes of gamers still persist. Conventional wisdom suggests that children and adults who spend a lot of their free time playing video games are socially inept and that video games may stunt the social development of children. But is this true? Recent research suggests that video games may have many social benefits and that certain types of games may even help boost social skills in children who struggle socially, such as those on the autism spectrum.

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