Harnessing the World’s Infatuation With Video Games for Better Health
By: Allison Hydzik
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – the biggest movie opening of all time when it was released in 2011 – made $90 million in its first day. Sounds pretty impressive. Until you learn that the video game Grand Theft Auto made $800 million in its first day.
Video gaming is an incredibly powerful tool to influence human behavior – between 1 and 2 billion people worldwide play video games for a combined 3 billion hours every week.
Brian Primack, M.D., Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor for health and society in the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences and director of Pitt’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health, recently discussed at TEDMED 2014 how the power that video games have over us can be leveraged to improve our health.
Tune in to learn his thoughts on making the games work for us – and find out which 1980s video game Dr. Primack’s playing when he’s not seeing patients or researching the influence of screen time on our well-being.
