Is computer gaming FLOW rather than the pathologies and disorders we hand out like candy?

I have been writing, blogging, vlogging and more recently podcasting around the topics of children who play computer games and use cyberspace for some time now. I have worked clinically with a high number of child clients ranging from 7 months to their late fifties that game, I have adult children who game and I have also played them myself. I am a (tepid) gamer, a mum, aunt, friend, psychotherapist and researcher and flow student (more on this is a moment). I have a new shift in my thinking so here it is.

During my time of watching and participating in games I have seen many things that astound me, shock me and excite me to name a few. I am wholly in awe and wonderment at the ability of a young person’s adaptation to the gaming world in terms of haptic and motor/memory control (I’m still looking at computer keyboards 30+ years down the line just in case the letters have moved, I know they haven’t but it’s just in case?). I watch the amount of information that is processed moment by moment and knowing the rates of brain processing speeds are reported as being approximately 60–120 bits per second I am in constant flux and challenge about this as these children and young people are seemingly processing much more than this when I watch them gaming. At this point in the writing of this article I went on a slight research tangent in my head about how we could measure this and how exciting it would be to do so and then remember I already have lots of research on my…