Want To Be A Better Surgeon? Play Video Games.

This is rather interesting: a study floating around over the past few days (and documented in the above video) concludes that in a simulation of surgery, high schoolers who play video games regularly do as well — and sometimes better — than actual surgeon residents.

But wait! Don’t stop reading and immediately yell at your children to stop studying and go play Xbox so they can be surgeons. The people behind the study think kids need to be learning other things, too.

“I’m not encouraging [teenagers] to spend countless hours in front of the computer games, because our job is not to create the best surgeon ever or the best soldier ever … in this age group,” said Sami Kilic, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in an interview with Slate. “They have to have the fundamental human being skills in their developing age.”

So make your kids play video games, but not too many video games. In other words, use common sense! And send this study to anyone who tells you that video games are a waste of time.