Plastic HAPPINESS. Roberto Baiocco, a researcher in the psychology department of the La Sapienza University, encloses it in these two words, that feeling of contentment that kids experience playing online in the rooms “the rooms where peers from all over the world converge”. Games where everyone has a «power negotiated and recognized by others, a virtual world that feeds on itself and which can lead to social isolation», adds Baiocco, author of various studies on the subject solitaire grand harvest free download.
INTERACTIVE
The Internet is just one of the possible ways for those who love playing with an interface: consoles, tablets, smartphones and PCs, video games are all the rage everywhere, especially among teenagers. And fashions multiply: from online challenges to creation to the possibility of stepping into someone else’s shoes and not always with a clean criminal record.
Demonizing them, however, “is useless” adds Giuseppe Lavenia, a psychotherapist specializing in new addictions, “rather parents should ask themselves what their children’s need to spend hours and hours in front of a PC hides”. For this Lavenia has developed a questionnaire for her young patients (mostly addicted to role-playing games) and their families on the subject. But several studies have been done on the subject. A meta-analysis conducted by the American Association of Psychologists (Apa) looks at the positive effects, after years of studies on “addiction, depression and aggression” that “certainly shouldn’t be ignored”. Video games have been shown to improve cognitive abilities: spatial orientation, reasoning, memory and perception. It is the three-dimensionality that helps in orientation, strategic games in “problem solving”, and violent ones give a boost to creativity. Simple games (such as Angry Birds) instead bring benefits to the mood and being beaten in the game leads to a strengthening of the ability to overcome difficulties even in life. Finally, multiplayer games, which involve participation from anywhere, create social communities, questioning the other stereotype: social isolation.
Three years ago we included the use of the Wii (the video game console, ed.) in the rehabilitation programs of those suffering from Parkinson’s. In our institute it is used with the help of a therapist. But a console alone is not enough, to keep the mind active you need a good social activity.
There are more violent products but production is vast: this reluctance has also conditioned the labor market, making Italy a country where little is experimented and created.
