There are lots of pros and cons when it comes to playing video games. The pros are of course that they provide children with a lot of entertainment, and they improve strategic thinking and problem solving. The cons are that your children may be playing games which are not appropriate i.e. too violent. Moreover, surely too much game playing is bad for your children’s eyes, right? Wrong! In fact, studies show that playing cartoon games can actually help to improve a child’s eyesight. Thus, if you are a parent reading this article, then you better think of another excuse to get your child off of their games. And, if you are a kid reading this article, well you can tell your parents about this new found bit of information.

First-person shooting games help those born with visual impairments

Daphne Maurer is the director of the Visual Development Lab at Ontario’s McMaster University. Her studies led her to the conclusion that children who were born visually impaired could improve their vision via playing first-person shooting games. She concluded that 40 hours of game time led children to be able to read a further two lines on an eye chart.

Action games can help improve an individual’s overall vision

When it comes to sight limitation a lot of people believe that the main problem is when individuals cannot see the difference between different shades of the same colour, such as grey. It has been reported that action games can help children when it comes to contrasts and thus can overall enhance their ability to see effectively.

Shooting games help to improve spatial resolution

Shooting games are becoming exceedingly popular, this includes anything from the more graphic and violent options, such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, to the more milder shooting games, such as Ben 10. As long as the game boasts a first-person shooter option then your child’s spatial resolution will be enhanced. This results to how well they can see small objects which are closely packed together. This is because obviously when shooting accurately there needs to be specific attention to the area of impact. According to New York’s University of Rochester, all your child needs to experience an enhancement in their spatial resolution is 30 hours of playing – this is barely anything in the grand scheme of things.

Adults can benefit too

Research has also indicated that video games can help adults when it comes to treating lazy eye. This is something which can be dealt with when children are young via an eye-patch over their stronger eye. However, this is something which becomes more difficult to treat the older an individual gets and thus video games have taken on an innovative way to try and combat this problem.

As you can see, video games can actually be highly beneficial when it comes to helping children with their eyesight. This is obviously something which is very important. If you have a child who was born with trouble seeing, then you may as well try to get them to play cartoon games. After all, what have you got to lose? There is everything to gain, and you may find that your child’s eyesight improves – even if only a little bit. There are lots of benefits to be had via playing video games online, and thus perhaps one could say there are even more pros that outweigh the cons.

Author bio – 

Donna Baxter is a freelance journalist. She used the cartoon games on Cartoon Network in order to research for this article.