Can’t Stop Worrying? Try Tetris To Ease Your Mind

If you’ve ever played Tetris — whether it was at an old-school Gameboy, or just on your iPhone — then you know: It’s 8-bit enchantment.

“Years of my life were lost disappearing into a game of Tetris on my Nintendo system,” says Kate Sweeny, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside.

But maybe the hours she spent lining those little blocks (“tetriminos”) into perfect rows of 10 weren’t a total waste. Her latest research suggests that Tetris can ease us through periods of anxiety by getting us to a blissfully engrossed mental state that psychologists call “flow.”