For three years I was a chubby 6th-grade kid that never did his work, and didn’t have many friends. Just the act of opening up to someone was extremely difficult, let alone the thought of becoming friends with strangers.
Gameboy, Wii, and the Nintendo DS had taken a firm grasp of my childhood, but I mostly played by myself because Nintendo at the time was not as multiplayer friendly.
Then one Christmas, my mom gifted me a PS4.
Instead of being alone like I was in school, I started to come home every day to play with people from Michigan, Tennessee and even Europe through my console.
We spoke on TeamSpeak and Discord for hours, which helped me get comfortable speaking to people.
The games we’d play varied from NBA2K16, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch and Minecraft.
So, I bet you’re wondering how video games positively affect your schoolwork? Isn’t it the other way around?
Because my online friends were around my age and I wanted to talk with them, I’d want to play more than they would be able to because of schoolwork. So, I would have to wait for them to finish.
And while I waited for them to finish their homework…I did my own. Soon we started to sync up our schedules and complete our school work so we could play video games. That soon became a habit.
Unfortunately, I’ve never met any of these people in real life, but the skills I learned have translated into my daily activities.
I’m happy to say that because of my experience with video games I made a lot more friends in high school and improved my grades exponentially.
I don’t think this strategy will work for everyone because I spent an unhealthy amount of time online practicing and every case is different, but it worked for me.
