A few days ago, I asked some of my friends to send me something they are passionate about. 

One of my friends said he was passionate about video games, another said soccer and another said football. The majority of people who answered my question responded with their favorite thing to do in their free time, which happened to be their way of coping with stress.

Many American adults (seven out of 10) declare they are currently under daily stress, whether it’s work related, personal or brought on by social pressures. Having sports or athletics be the thing you turn to when you’re stressed has many benefits to it.

Doing physical activity to relieve stress has been shown to minimize fatigue, improve concentration and alertness and raise the total cognitive functions compared to someone under a great amount of stress. Also, doing physical activity releases endorphins that carry natural painkilling chemicals along with reducing stress. All the reasons above are why I believe my friends are passionate about sports.

Along with all the physical benefits, sports are a great way to meet new people. Being a member of a team has made my friends feel included in their new lives away from home at college. Sports is one of the stress relieving activities that doesn’t have many cons. Besides the danger of hurting yourself in one way or another, athletics has proven to have many physical and social benefits that make this danger a minor concern.

Video games and binge watching TV are two more stress relievers that were brought to my attention. Video games are stereotypically meant for boys to play and be addicted to, but this stereotype is slowly becoming a fable. More and more females are playing video games, making it more of a great social activity.

While playing video games, people can talk to other people from down the street to a few states away to even countries away. Video games have also been proven to help players make faster, accurate decisions along with improving how your brain processes visual information.

I would still choose physical activity over video games because video games still can be addicting to some. But video games, played in moderation, can be an amazing way to relieve stress. Sometimes people need that hour of fictional violence to feel less stressed.

Binge watching. The temptation that has been with all of us since we first began watching television. As much hate as my generation is getting for watching Netflix, Hulu or YouTube more than they probably should, I think this is just another way to relieve stress.

Binge watching shows provides a great way to start a conversation with others. Saying that you watched a show is the new equivalent to fangirling over fictional characters in books. Yes, some of us still do read books instead of getting absorbed into a fictional televised land, but fangirling is fangirling.

The only rules are that is must be fictional and an original storyline you did not create. Binge watching is a great way to take your mind off the realities of life and focus on someone else’s successes and mistakes. Personally, I see no problem in binge watching as long as you leave time for the important things.

Procrastination is good in small portions. If you push off a project worth 50 percent of your grade for eight out of the nine weeks given, that probably is too much. But waiting one week and doing it slowly until the due date is a better way to use your powers of procrastination.

I am such a firm believer in things in moderation that it will probably be engraved on my gravestone, and it is my belief here.

If you relieve stress by playing video games, play for two or three hours a day or just wait until you finish your homework or whatever other important tasks should be done. If you fell in love with fill in the blank with your recent show obsession and you feel yourself sliding into the binge watching place on the couch, take a break and do something productive. Allow yourself a few episodes of “down time” after school or work, then finish your homework, paperwork or chores and return to your show.

There’s a line on how much procrastination you can do before it begins to interfere with your life. Try not to cross it.