Brainjoggers must abstain from video games throughout the duration of their therapy; ideally, children encounter Brainjogging, realize the disservice video games do them and never pick up a console again. Brainjogging encourages students to get outside, run around, jump rope. We want our students to exercise their minds and imaginations by building with Legos and blocks and imitating life with action figures.
Brainjogging believes you can engage your mind by engaging your body, and ever increasing studies are validating this perspective. A new study by West Virginia University recently conducted a study on young teens and the effect that involvement in sports has on their physical, social and mental well-being. Dr. Keith Zullig and Rebecca White wanted to find “the relationship between physical activity (including sports participation), life satisfaction and self-rated health concurrently” (Science Daily). Theirs was the first study conducted exclusively on the middle school population.
Boys reported that “vigorous activity had no effect on either life satisfaction or self-rated health,” but girls “who had taken part in vigorous activity in the last week were significantly more satisfied with their life compared to girls who had not.” Both boys and girls experienced higher life satisfaction when they played on a sports team. “Boys were five times more likely, and girls 30 times more likely, to describe their health as fair/poor when they were not playing on a sports team.” Zulling and White conclude, “Our study demonstrates the benefits of young sports participation on self-rated and life satisfaction among young youth at a critical juncture in adolescent development. Our findings suggest that sports team participation may enhance school connectedness, social support and bonding among friends and teammates.”