Do Video Games Make You Smarter? What the Research Shows

By the IQ Revealed Team · Updated October 15, 2026

Mostly no — video games do not make you smarter in the general sense that an IQ score measures. Fast action games can sharpen specific skills, such as visual attention and mental rotation, and those effects hold up in controlled trials. But when researchers pool every study of video game training, the effect on overall cognitive ability is small or absent. Games mostly make you better at games and at the skills they use most.

Two questions in one

“Do video games make you smarter?” hides two questions. Are people who play a lot sharper than people who do not? And does playing make someone sharper? The first can be answered by comparing gamers with non-gamers, but a difference could simply mean that people with quick reactions enjoy fast games. Only studies that assign non-players to play, and compare them with a fair control group, can answer the second.

What the biggest analyses found

Two meta-analyses, both published in Psychological Bulletin in 2018, reach answers that sound opposite but fit together.

All games, overall ability: small or nothing. Giovanni Sala, Semir Tatlidil and Fernand Gobet ran three analyses: the link between game skill and cognitive ability (310 effect sizes), gamers versus non-gamers (315) and the effect of game training (359). All three found small or null overall effects, and no evidence that playing causes better cognitive ability.
Action games, specific skills: a real effect. Benoit Bediou, Daphne Bavelier and colleagues looked only at action games. Habitual players scored about half a standard deviation higher on perceptual, attention and cognitive tasks (g = 0.55). Training studies, in which non-players were assigned to action games and compared with people playing other games, showed a smaller effect of about a third of a standard deviation (g = 0.34), clearest for attention and spatial skills. The authors also estimated that publication bias makes the published effects about 30% larger than in the full literature.

Put together: playing a fast shooter may genuinely train how you spread attention across a busy screen. It does not train the general reasoning that intelligence tests are built to measure.

The experiments behind the headlines

The idea took off in 2003, when C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier reported in Nature that habitual action-game players beat non-players on several measures of visual attention, and that non-players who trained on an action game improved too. Five years later, a team at the University of Illinois tried to replicate and extend it. Expert gamers again outperformed non-gamers: they tracked faster-moving objects, switched tasks more quickly and rotated shapes in their heads more efficiently. But when non-gamers played more than 20 hours of an action, puzzle or strategy game, their performance did not substantially improve on most tasks, except for a modest gain in mental rotation. The authors concluded that some of the expert advantage may reflect who becomes an expert gamer in the first place.

Mental rotation is the clearest exception, and it fits a wider finding. A 2013 meta-analysis of 217 studies of spatial training found an average effect of g = 0.47 that lasted over time and carried over to untrained spatial tasks. Spatial reasoning appears to be one of the more trainable abilities, but it is one part of intelligence, not all of it.

What about children and IQ?

The most quoted recent figure comes from a 2022 study of 9,855 American children in the ABCD study, tested at ages 9–10 and again two years later. After allowing for genetic differences and family background, children who gamed more than average gained about 2.5 IQ points more over the two years (standardized β = 0.17). Gaming was not linked to intelligence at the start. The authors read this as consistent with a benefit, but the design has limits: screen time was self-reported, and an observational study cannot rule out other explanations.

A second ABCD analysis, which a US government press release summarised in 2022, compared about 2,000 children who never gamed with children who played 21 hours a week or more. The paper was retracted and replaced in 2023 after a correction of its analysis. The corrected version still finds that the gamers did better on a response-inhibition task and a working-memory task, but calls the differences very small and says they lack clinical relevance. It also reports that parents of the heavy gamers rated them higher on attention problems, depression and ADHD symptoms. Both findings are associations, not effects of gaming.

Brain changes are not IQ gains

In a Berlin study, adults who played a Super Mario game for at least 30 minutes a day for two months showed grey-matter increases in the right hippocampus, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum — areas used for navigation, planning and motor control. The brain changes with practice, which is what neuroplasticity means. A larger region in a scan is not evidence of higher intelligence, and the study did not measure IQ.

Some applied results are striking but narrow. Among 33 surgeons and surgical residents, those who had played video games for more than three hours a week made 37% fewer errors and worked 27% faster on keyhole-surgery drills, in a cross-sectional comparison. In a small study at the University of Padua, children with dyslexia who played action games for 12 hours read faster afterwards, with no loss of accuracy, while a group playing non-action games did not. Both are specific skills linked to the specific demands of the game, not general intelligence, and the dyslexia result comes from a small sample.

Why the gains stay in the game

Video games join a familiar list. Chess, music lessons and working memory training have all been tested the same way, and the pattern repeats: practice improves the practised skill, while “far transfer” to unrelated abilities is rare. Our pages on whether chess makes you smarter and on dual n-back brain training trace the same evidence. Action games may sit at the stronger end of the list because they train attention, which many other tasks use, but even there the effects are moderate and concentrated in perception, attention and spatial skills.

Should you play for your brain?

Play because you enjoy it. Games are a legitimate hobby; they do not need a brain-training excuse.
Expect specific gains. Fast action games may sharpen visual attention and spatial skills; 3D navigation games exercise spatial memory.
Do not expect an IQ boost. No controlled trial shows a general rise in intelligence from gaming.
Keep the balance. Sleep, schoolwork, exercise and friendships matter more than any game’s cognitive side effects.

For what does move measured intelligence, see can you increase your IQ? Reading has better evidence behind it than most hobbies — see does reading make you smarter?

Trust and scope notes

This page summarises published research for general information. We say which results come from controlled trials and which are correlations, and we flag the retracted-and-replaced study. Nothing here is medical advice. The IQ Revealed test is an online reasoning test of 40 original items for adults aged 18 and over; it is not a clinical assessment, and our guide to how IQ tests work explains what an online test can and cannot tell you.

IQ Revealed is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Nintendo, any game publisher, the ABCD study, the National Institutes of Health, or the journals, universities, researchers or studies named on this page. Names are used only to identify the research being described.

Frequently asked questions

Do video games make you smarter?＋

Not in the general sense that an IQ score measures. Fast action games can sharpen some specific skills, such as visual attention and mental rotation, and those gains show up in controlled trials. But the largest meta-analysis of video game training found small or no effects on overall cognitive ability, and no evidence that playing causes a general rise in intelligence.

Can video games increase your IQ?＋

There is no good evidence that they raise IQ in adults. One large study of almost 10,000 American children found that those who gamed more than average gained about 2.5 IQ points more over two years, after allowing for genetics and family background. It is an observational study based on self-reported screen time, so it cannot prove that gaming caused the gain.

Are video games good for your brain?＋

Some games train some skills. Action games are linked to better attention and spatial skills, and a Berlin study found grey-matter increases in brain areas used for navigation and planning after two months of a Super Mario game. A change in brain volume is not the same as becoming more intelligent, and none of this shows that games protect the brain.

Do gamers have a higher IQ?＋

Not meaningfully. A meta-analysis that compared players with non-players across more than 300 comparisons found only small differences in overall cognitive ability. Where expert gamers do outperform non-gamers on specific tasks, part of the gap may come from who chooses to play a lot rather than from the playing itself.

Which video games are best for the brain?＋

The most consistent research results are for fast action games, which train attention and spatial skills, and for 3D games that require navigation. Puzzle and strategy games have weaker evidence. Whatever the genre, expect the game to improve the skills it uses most, not your general intelligence.

Is a lot of gaming bad for children?＋

The research does not support a simple answer either way. In a large US study, children who played 21 hours a week or more did very slightly better on two brain-scan tasks, and their parents reported more attention problems and low mood than for non-gaming children. Both results are associations, not causes. Sleep, school, exercise and friendships are the sensible things to watch.