[enanoretozon]

Couldn't the same be said of people who play sports or jazz or any other thing that involves making fast decisions?

It's like there's this desperate need of justifying playing video games with every new study that says 'look! I am not actually wasting my time!'

Personally I think no silly justification is needed as there's nothing wrong with enjoying entertainment.

[Groxx]

Yes, but playing sports or jazz isn't as demonized as playing video games is.

[eru]

Not any longer. Jazz was once evil, too.

[noahth]

I think the fact that this is comparable to sports or jazz is exactly the point. While I imagine that you'd have to go back prettaayyyy far to find the time when sports were demonized as anything from an utter sin to a slightly pitiable time-waster, jazz certainly endured those characterizations when it was emerging into popular culture.

The same is true of any number of other media that now enjoy nigh-immeasurable popular esteem: the novel, for example. If we'd had the same educational-industrial apparatus then as we do now, surely some enterprising PhD candidate would have staked his career on studies illuminating the benefits of reading novels.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this - the real question that remains is just how valuable this effect of gaming is in the non-gaming world. And boy is that a doozy of a question!

[fgf]

ability in sport = martial prowess / hunting skills / good health in general / good genes in general -- It has always been more or less universally respected.

Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.

[yesbabyyes]

Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.

As have gamers.

[fgf]

"social status" that doesn't get you laid =//= social status that does

[derefr]

Yes—but saying that "games" improve your cognition speed cuts to the heart of the issue, because a game is, by definition, an artificially-constructed scenario involving time-limited decision-making. It's basically the lab-experiment equivalent to sports/jazz/etc., with all the irrelevant factors removed.