Think about the cornerstones of your childhood for a second. What did the 8-year-old you like to do in your free time?

As children, we live in our own creative environments. We set up the foundations for all of what makes us who we are. Whether it was the first swing at home plate in your little league game, or the first time you pressed down on a piano key – your youth is when you discover what you love.

It’s not often that I sit down at my keyboard and try and show off whatever persuasive writing chops I have, but when it comes to something that I always look back fondly on, such as a cornerstone of my childhood, I do what I can to prove a point. And that point is: video games are actually quite amazing.

There’s a moment that so many of us have experienced as children that we simply can’t replicate in our older years. It’s those legendary nights as 8-year-old children, up late, well past our bedtime, sitting on the ground accompanied by nothing but the glow of our tube television and the humming of the video game in front of us. Our only care in the world was how we were going to beat the next level of our favorite game; nothing else mattered. There were no tests to take, no jobs to show up for, no need to will yourself to the gym. There was just us enjoying the moment.

This place of happiness for so many of us who grew up on our Nintendo 64s, PS2s and GameCubes quickly dissipated as life began to give us responsibilities. Beyond the daily routine of making the grade and staying fiscally healthy is the need to be in good standing socially, and for those who loved gaming as children know, their cornerstone hobby didn’t blend well with this tertiary need.

Societal stereotypes depict gaming as antisocial, unproductive, lazy and typically male-oriented. All of that is really unfortunate, because like so many stereotypes, they’re exaggerations founded in little truth.

But what is the truth about video games?

Let’s address the societal part: girls can play video games, too. Anyone who has ever owned an Xbox Live account can tell you that girls play video games. But let’s break it down numerically. According to a study done by the Entertainment Software Association, there are nearly 190 million gamers across the country, nearly 48 percent of whom are women. What about the stereotyped demographic, the teenage, antisocial male? Well, they make up a little less than 15 percent of the industry.

We aren’t just talking about fun little apps on your phones, either. The women demographics’ dedication to console gaming has skyrocketed since 2011, with the average female gamer playing for 13 years, long before any gaming apps were around, or general use of smartphones was widespread, for that matter. So while videogames continue to reach a broader market with emphasis on casual gaming, innovative control schemes and genres that appeal to the masses, the cornerstone hobby for many of us is actually bringing societal groups together into a singular hobby, rather than splitting away the teen boy into an antisocial dungeon.

Further, the idea that video games are totally unproductive has proven to be wrong again and again. Not only has gaming proved to not be a trap of isolation, or a medium in which young children vicariously learn through their in-game character, but gaming also has several positive cognitive effects. From a study published in "Psychology Today," video games have been found to improve visual contrast sensitivity. Consequently, this finding has been used as a treatment for amblyopia, or as we know it, lazy eye. The same study goes on to note that gaming improves spatial awareness, improved ability to track moving objects and improved test scores for children with dyslexia, among many other benefits. The list goes on and on. So while Jack Thompson continues to dig through the coding of "Grand Theft Auto" to find reasons to hate videogames, the reasons to play are right in front of you and have been studied and proven beneficial.

I could dig up studies and meta-analyses for hours, but before I get too deep into the analytics, let’s just look at the hobby and culture for what it is – entertainment. There’s a reason that "GTA IV" was at one point the highest grossing piece of entertainment; there is reason behind the growing popularity in eSports, which drew in 32 million viewers for the League of Legends final; there is reason for the growing demographic that developers continue to reach. Video games entertain, they reach a wide variety of people, and there are proven benefits with little proven detriments beyond the fear mongering you see on TV. It’s entertainment; it’s something we loved as children and it's fun.

When you need to kill some time, why not play a video game? I’m not advocating to skip out on your responsibilities, but no hobby should get in the way of that. Time and time again, video games are amazing.