It seems grabbing the iPad for a game of Scrabble or solitaire has cognitive and socio-emotional benefits for seniors, according to one SFU professor.
David Kaufman, who’s leading a study on whether digital games are beneficial to older adults, says his early findings show declines in loneliness and boosts in reported friendships, passion and interests.
Kaufman surveyed 950 seniors in Metro Vancouver, asking if they had played any games in the last year. The ones who answered yes filled out a questionnaire. Of that group, about 450 said they had played a digital game.
“We asked them a series of questions about their patterns,” says Kaufman. “We found, for example, that a third of them play between five and seven days a week. Typically, about half of them play one to two hours, and the games they tend to play are games they played in the past when they were younger but are now digital ... like chess.”
The respondents were asked to report on the benefits of playing the games.
“Basically, they told us the major benefit, which nearly 90 per cent came up with, is cognitive, and the second one is just having fun,” notes Kaufman.
He adds only about a quarter of seniors said playing a digital game provided a social benefit, in part, because only a minority of players actually play with others.
“In fact, at this point, most seniors are playing games pretty much by themselves. That was surprising because we expected people to say, ‘Yeah, we play with our grandchildren all the time,’” says Kaufman.
The professor also ran an “intervention,” where his team developed a bingo-like game.
A group of older adults were put into groups of four and in front of a laptop. When a bingo number was called, players who had that number were presented with a multiple choice question they had to answer in order to put the token on the square. Questions were based on healthy living and nutrition.
“The idea is then it’s kind of competitive because what happened is you have easy questions, medium questions and hard questions come up,” says Kaufman. “Technology can, in a different and fun way, increase social connectedness and improve depression.”
