How video games cure your brainrot
Video games are actually amazing for your brain, here's why
Video games have been demonized like crazy over the last couple of years.
“Video games make you dumb and anti social, it’s a waste of time, you’re a beta male if you play video games, you’ll never be successful if you play video games.”
They’ve gotten the reputation of this activity that destroys your attention span, makes you anti social and dumb.
But just think back to the good old video game days. Life felt better and I bet you didn’t feel like you were destroying your life, despite all these red pill alphas saying so (maybe unless you played 12 hours per day).
Nowadays you can’t watch a movie without checking your phone 10 times. You can’t eat a meal without a youtube video playing in the background. You can’t read a book for more than 10 minutes.
We’ve started experiencing actual BRAINROT. To the point where it was literally the word of the year in 2024. But it wasn’t from video games, it was from smartphones.
Mindlessly scrolling your phone for hours every day is what actually causes brainrot, and in this article I wanna go over why, and why video games fix it.
People were right that screens are bad for us, but they just blamed the wrong ones. Parents won’t allow their kids to play GTA or Call of Duty because “they’re too violent”, but they give them a smartphone with TikTok before they can even walk properly.
The effects of doomscrolling
To understand why video games are beneficial, you first have to understand why doomscrolling is so bad for you.
Apps like TikTok, Instagram, X, etc. are all engineered for passive consumption. They require pretty much zero cognitive effort. You watch a short video or read a short post and then you swipe, get a small dopamine hit and repeat that until you’ve suddenly spent two hours doing absolutely nothing.
Sometimes you feel like you’ve entered a time machine and just travelled into the future because you just totally loose track of time. Your brain is just in this “low power mode”, where you’re constantly reacting to all these posts, but you’re never actually thinking deeply or really using your brain.
This is the definition of brainrot. You train your brain to crave immediate gratification and destroy your attention span in the process.
And we have studies to back up the negative effects of doomscrolling. Recently a study came up that literally proved that short form content causes “brainrot”.
This study looked at nearly 100,000 participants across 71 studies and found that the more short form videos you watch, the worse your cognition, attention, mental health, stress and anxiety will be.
Other studies have also found that the more screen time you have on your phone, the worse your physical health is as well.
Video games might seem like they’re pretty similar on the surface, but in reality they’re pretty much the polar opposite of doomscrolling.
When you’re running around nuke town on Call of Duty or fighting a boss in Elden Ring, it’s cognitively demanding and requires that your brain is firing on all cylinders.
You are constantly:
Tracking multiple objects in 3D space
Making split second decisions based on what you see
Coming up with strategies and changing them when they fail, etc.
Memorizing maps and controls
And so much more
What on the surface might just seem like another “mindless” activity, is actually highly stimulating and requires your mind to work hard.
Doomscrolling = passive activity
Video games = active engagement
So what are the actual benefits of video games then?
Benefits of video games
Believe it or not, in the last couple decades there has actually emerged a good amount of evidence to support the fact that video games are beneficial to your brain health.
Look at this study for starters. Playing Super Mario increases gray matter in the brain. Gray matter helps you process information in the brain, and is important for memory, emotions, speech, muscle control, etc.
So this literally shows that video games improve your memory and attention span. Yes you read that right, video games IMPROVE YOUR ATTENTION SPAN.
The attention span which get absolutely destroyed by doomscrolling social media.
This study is particularly important since it wasn’t just “feeling” cognitively smarter. They actually did MRI scans of the brain and found increases in this gray matter, which is pretty cool.
The brain is like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it atrophies (gets weaker). Certain video games like Super Mario force you to train the brain and keep it sharp.
This meta analysis below looked at the effects of action video games on cognition and found improvements in “domains of top down attention and spatial cognition”.
Pretty cool.
Another study here looked at video games and found improvements in visual skills.
Once again, pretty cool if you ask me.
Another study looked at the impact of video games on training surgeons. It’s results are pretty insane. Those who had played video games in the past and those who played video games currently made about 30% fewer errors and completed the surgery about 25% faster, and just overall did a better job compared to those who didn’t play video games.
This once again shows the positive effects video games have on your brain. Here’s the study if you’re interested.
There’s literally a ton of different cognitive benefits to playing video games, so I really don’t understand why they have gotten such a bad reputation as this thing you shouldn’t do.
If the alternative is doomscrolling social media then video games are definitely 100x better. Obviously there is a limit to how much time you should spend on video games every day, as anything you do too much can become bad for you.
If you are outright addicted to video games and spend 10 hours per day playing, then it’s obviously bad, but that’s not what I am telling you to do. This will limit the amount of time you can spend on more productive habits like working, exercising, spending time with friends and family, reading books, getting sunlight, etc.
The Super Mario study only had people play for 30 minutes per day for 2 months, so it’s not like you need to spend hours every day playing.
Everything in moderation. Obviously there’s such a thing as too much time spent playing video games, just like you can exercise too much or drink too much water.
The type of video game matters
The type of video game you play matters a lot. Not all types of video games are actually beneficial for you.
It probably doesn’t take a genius to figure out that cookie clicker won’t have the same cognitive benefits as Elden Ring, Super Mario or Civilization.
The best type of video games are the ones that let you make most of the choices and require a good amount of strategy, error correction, etc.
Basically, video games that are “hard” are the best. Games like Elden Ring, Civilization, Super Mario, Call of Duty and sim racing games like iRacing, Asetto Corsa, etc.
Games where you have to constantly make high speed decisions, keep track of multiple objects at the same time and much more.
The things I went over earlier.
Don’t be this guy
Yeah, I have said video games can be good for you, but that doesn’t mean you should become this guy.
Not working out, sitting in your room 12 hours per day playing Fortnite, never getting sunlight, eating junk food all day, not doing cool shit.
You still need to lock in.
Work on making it out the matrix (sorry), taking care of your body, eating clean, doing cool side quests, spending time with friends and family, climbing a mountain, reading books, learning a new language etc.
Video games are cool and can have pretty amazing benefits, but real life will always be 100x cooler, don’t forget that.
Like I talked about earlier, it’s about finding the balance.
Real life stuff > video games > doomscrolling.
Video games should never come before going for a hike, going to the beach, surfing, tanning, playing a sport with your friends, etc.
But just because you prioritize those things, there is still more than enough time in the day to play an hour of video games if that’s what you want.
It’s also funny how all these red pill dudes who say “video games are for beta males, they lower your test and bla bla bla” are probably all spending hours per day on social media anyways.
The thing I wanna get across with this article is that video games are so much better for you than doomscrolling, so if you find yourself on the couch scrolling social media, just go play video games instead.
A lot of dudes also say that they feel video games aren’t as fun as they used to be, which is why they just scroll their phone instead. Listen, the reason video games aren’t “fun” anymore is that you’re getting way more dopamine from scrolling.
It’s just like a heroin addict who doesn’t enjoy anything else in life except heroin.
When you stop doomscrolling all day, all these other activities actually become fun again.
Conclusion
Look, video games aren’t some “beta, anti social” activity that’s gonna make you dumb. That’s what I was told, which is why I stopped playing for a while.
But when you actually dive into the scientific literature on video games and look past the “red pill alphas” who say it’s bad for you, you find out that it’s actually pretty insane what kind of effects they have on brain health.
It’s clear that it’s way better than doomscrolling your phone and any type of activity that can get you away from spending time on your smartphone is great.
But remember, everything in moderation. Sitting in front of the screen for hours is not gonna be good. You need to move your body, adjust your vision, etc.
Staring at a screen for hours at a time without breaks will increase your chance of developing myopia (short sightedness), so always take breaks to go outside and look into the horizon.
Just in general, you should try to spend more time outside than inside.
That’s pretty much it, thanks for reading and remember:
Real life > screens
— Kasper Veritas