Ever try to get grandma to pick up the old joystick? (Not that joystick sicko.) Probably not. "Hey Gamgam, wanna play Halo?" is among the least likely sentences in the English language, not simply because Halo is a violent game that your average grandmother would never want to play but also because old people simply don't play video games. But they should.A new study published in the awesome journal Computers in Human Behavior offers scientific proof that video games make old people happy. Well, most of them, anyway. Out of 140 people over the age of 63, a pretty surprising 61 percent of the subjects said they played video games occasionally, and an even more surprising 35 percent said they played once a week. Okay, so some old people play video games — read: solitaire and/or Angry Birds — and they're better off for it.Scientists said that the gamers "reported higher levels of well-being," while non-gamers reported more negative emotions and a tendency toward higher levels of depression." The study's abstract concludes, "Findings suggest that playing may serve as a positive activity associated with successful aging."Successful aging, huh? There's an interesting and basically optimistic way of looking at the long, rocky road to Hades. But it's also a burgeoning if not thriving area for new technologies. As the Baby Boomer generation signs up for Medicare and enters the golden years, the youth really ought to put the same minds that invented the iPhone and Facebook and Xbox and everything else to work on problems that the elderly face. Off the top of my head, there could be games specifically designed to preserve cognition in aging brains. There could be mobile devices geared towards geriatric patients, both fun ones and functional ones. There could be robots. (More on that in a second.)There is some urgency to bring these technologies to market. Jane Gross runs The New Old Age blog at The New York Times and has written extensively about the charms and challenges of the moment, when roles are reversed and we find ourselves taking care of parents and grandparents.A couple of years ago, Gross wrote a post about longevity and how students at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health are "now scrambling to prepare its students to turn this age wave from a public health emergency to an opportunity" to improve healthcare and make the lives of the elderly better. Imagine if Silicon Valley did the same thing.In Japan, where the olds outnumber the youngs, they've been seizing this opportunity for a while. It's no mystery that the Japanese love technology, especially robots, and a number of high tech products for the elderly have made it to market. Notable among them are personal assistant robots that can serve as a valet of sorts for old people. They've even experimented with making these companions look like cute, cuddly pets to help the elderly adjust to an otherwise scary cyborg.The robotic personal assistant industry is coming to the United States as well. In a matter of days, an invention called the Roboy will be unveiled as the world's most advanced robotic personal assistant. Though it looks less like a cute cuddly thing and more like Skeletor, it could do some good. But we could be doing a lot more.It's a smart thing to do. After all, we're all going to get old one day, and if we put our limber young brains to work on making life more comfortable when that time comes, we'll be happier. There's no better way to spend those last days before the final the final GAME OVER.
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