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Recently, YouTube gamer Valkyrae mentioned that she felt video games made her stuck emotionally as she streamed for so long. Now what does this mean and are video games detrimental to one's emotional health?
Let's talk about it
Now with streamers becoming more and more popular the audience has certain demands when it comes to these streamers such as time playing, reactions to games and types of games are being streamed. As streamers don't have any guidance and stream on their own there are no limits when it comes to how the games will be experienced. This leads to damages in streamers mental and physical health which has led companies such as Twitch to interfere and give tips as well as support to their streamers on said platform. Nevertheless, there is research on this subject matter.
What does the research say?
Overall, it is clear that playing video games and human creativity are two themes that have drawn more public and academic attention than ever before. Emotional creativity, which is a component of overall creativity, has a significant positive impact on developing interpersonal relationships, finding fulfillment in life, and achieving a general sense of well-being, even though creativity itself is regarded as essential for new knowledge societies and innovations. Due to the fact that for some people, playing video games takes up a sizable portion of their free time, the phenomenon of video game playing has drawn substantial attention from the European populace. Some estimates have the number of video game players in the EU at 54 percent of the total population.
Has this been applied to school programs?
Yes! In 2019 a training called EmotivaMente was performed at a high school. This consisted of guided gaming with emotional intelligence training which gave really good results. EmotivaMente helped adolescents to improve emotional skills. Results confirmed that videogames can be useful to promote EI in adolescents at school, if integrated with a guided and assisted framework. Implication of the findings and recommendations for future research are made. This research can be found at the Games for Health digital journal.
The STEM Forged Difference
STEM Forged programs meet students where they already are. Almost all kids play video games, so we use them as a medium that students already understand. STEM Forged game design programs teach important skills like coding and healthy communication. The esports programs create a positive, inclusive, team oriented environment for students to play games with their peers. In either case, we use our programs to provide students with an opportunity to be social and work or play alongside their peers.