How much time should you spend playing Candy Crush? Or SimCity? Or Tetris? or Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes? If you think these are just time wasters, you’re wrong.

In a really interesting TED Talk and similarly interesting interview on Tim Ferriss’s podcast, Jane McGonigal (creator of SuperBetter) has discussed how gaming per se improves brain function.

McGonigal has written two very interesting books about the gamification of the world: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World  and Superbetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient–Powered by the Science of Games. I recommend both for anyone interested in how people learn and how people improve. I’ve been dabbling a little bit with how we can use games to improve education, and I think it’s pretty promising.

Naturally, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Too much Candy Crush and everything else starts to suffer. Too much ice cream and you gain weight. And so on.

As a periodic diversion, games like Candy Crush are great. Play on, without fear.