We know you’re reading this for a reason: you like—scratch that, you love trivia. Maybe you’re a casual trivia enjoyer, or you’ve gotten so serious about trivia that you’ve appeared on a quiz game show. No matter your background, we can assume that you think trivia is pretty darn special.
But what exactly makes trivia so special that you keep coming back to it? Does it have any benefits other than just being fun? And is trivia really that vital for your life?
We at Trivia Bliss can answer those last two questions with a resounding “yes”! Trivia is an excellent addition to a well-lived life; we’ll tell you exactly why below. Read on to find out our eight favorite reasons why trivia is important for your life. Scroll down for details!
Trivia Helps Cognitive Ability
First things first: trivia is an excellent way to stimulate your brain. It’s well-known that learning new things allows your brain to create new neural pathways. This can increase brain plasticity and increase your mental longevity.
No matter whether you’re young or old, trivia can be helpful for improving your brain health and function. By stimulating your mind with a steady stream of new and fun facts, you’ll tickle the parts of your brain that allow you to understand new languages or grasp new concepts.
When combined with healthy eating, body movement, and getting enough sleep, stimulating your brain is part of the perfect recipe for optimal cognitive ability and overall health. And learning and recounting trivia questions and answers will give your brain the exercise it needs to stay as healthy as possible.
TL;DR: trivia can be a great tool to make you smarter in the short term and keep your mind active in the long term. Sounds like a win-win to us!
Trivia Improves Your Memory
In the same vein, trivia can help you to improve your memory. Perhaps this goes without saying, but being able to recall trivia facts at the drop of a hat involves quite a bit of memorization.
Think about Jeopardy! contestants, for example. They’re not up at the podiums making wild guesses about the answer to a trivia question (well, at least most of the time). Instead, they’re wracking their brains for the metaphorical mental file folder containing all the information they know about any topic. They don’t call trivia heads “walking encyclopedias” for nothing!
Trivia enthusiasts are known for having excellent memories, but you don’t have to have the sharpest memory to start improving your recall! You can train your brain to grow your memory into something spectacular by simply exercising quiz repetition and consistently practicing your trivia facts.
Trivia Helps to Create Community
In addition to having practical mental benefits, trivia can help you to reconnect with your family and friends. This is one beneficial aspect of trivia that airs on the emotional side of things. Spending time with others playing trivia can help you to leave loneliness behind and increase feelings of happiness and camaraderie. By hosting a trivia game night for your loved ones, you can bond over the joy of learning together with a little competition.
During the pandemic, virtual trivia nights became a much-needed respite from the realities of life in isolation. Many folks realized they’d forgotten about the fun of a communal game night in the years leading up to quarantine. Now that the world seems to have opened back up, more people have incorporated trivia nights as a permanent fixture in their social lives to help keep them connected with those they care about.
If your current friends aren’t huge trivia fans, there’s no need to worry. Trivia can also help you find new friends who are interested in the same topics that you are. For example, many bars and pubs have specific-themed trivia nights, so you can search for one that fits your area of interest to meet others who feel the same way. It’s so fun to indulge in nerding out about your favorite topics with new friends; trivia can help you do that!
If you’re interested in other ways that trivia can engage you socially, why not share a daily trivia fun fact with a group of friends? In a text group chat or email chain, message a trivia question to some fact-loving folks and prompt them to send one question back each. After everyone has sent a question along, deliver the answer. You’ll be surprised how much new information you can get this way!
Alternatively, you can exchange trivia facts and figures with a single interested friend in a solo chat. This creates a more personal trivia-based bond and allows you to pace yourself with sending and receiving trivia questions instead of being sent many at once.
Trivia Expands Your Awareness of the World
Another great reason trivia is important for your life is that it helps expand your awareness of the world around you. In your daily life, it’s unlikely you get to engage in something as all-encompassing and wide spanning as trivia. After all, trivia encapsulates every imaginable topic (if you don’t believe us, head to our trivia database to be proven wrong about that one!).
Trivia allows you to get out of your bubble and think about the information that doesn’t necessarily pertain to your life. And isn’t that special? In today’s day and age of curated media, it’s especially important to learn about perspectives, facts, and figures about topics that don’t concern you personally. This makes trivia an ideal outlet for learning to think outside the box and beyond yourself. So, go ahead and learn a smattering of random trivia facts. You’ll learn something new, and you’ll get to live outside your own personal world for a moment!
Trivia is a Healthy Habit
Our fifth reason for why trivia is so important for your life is that it’s a healthy habit. Just like taking a daily walk, drinking enough water, and keeping a tidy house, making trivia a daily ritual is an excellent way to improve your life. By spending a little time every day quizzing yourself (or others!) about a trivia topic or two, you can introduce some brightness into your daily life.
If you’re prone to forming less than healthy habits (say, biting your nails) or you find yourself hyper-fixating on one interest at a time, carrying that energy into trivia can be beneficial. Trivia diehards often say that learning new facts is addicting, and for good reason—it’s easy to get sucked into a new and interesting topic once you start reading about it!
Try to break a bad habit by introducing trivia as a reward for not engaging in it. You’d be surprised how much easier it can be to let go of old habits by turning trivia into an incentive. So, let yourself read up on your favorite trivia topic and watch as this new habit replaces other tired ones.
Trivia Is a Great Conversation Starter
If you never know how to start a conversation with an unfamiliar coworker or find yourself struggling to make small talk with your grocery store clerk, why not whip out a trivia fact? A good ol’ trivia tidbit can be the perfect way to get everyone talking!
With the help of trivia, you never have to worry about an awkward lull in a conversation going unfilled. Even if you don’t want to continue talking about trivia for long, a fun fact can be just what is needed to bring you and your conversational partner together.
Try peppering these fun trivia questions into a conversation to get the ball rolling:
- Which dog is named for the German word for “muzzle”? (Schnauzer)
- What’s the name of the sleepy village where the action takes place in Hot Fuzz? (Sanford)
- On which date do Greek and Russian Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas? (January 6)
- How many stars are in the Little Dipper? (There are six stars in the Little Dipper)
Start with one of these and see where the conversation goes!
Trivia Can Help You Relax
Are you looking to unwind after another hard day in this cruel world? Lucky for you, there’s a little thing called trivia that can help.
If you’ve got a stressful job or you find yourself in a difficult situation that you need some relief from, trivia might just be the outlet you need to decompress. Trivia can take your mind off of whatever is troubling you for an hour or two as you quiz yourself or play a game with friends.
Even if you just commit to learning a few new trivia facts per day, you’ll still be doing your brain some good as you give it a break from whatever tough stuff may be bogging you down. One trivia question alone could be enough to do you some good!
So, the next time you’re having a particularly stress-filled day, take a moment to breathe and treat yourself to a brief trivia moment. It might help you feel a little better,
Trivia Makes You Feel Good About Yourself
Another small but mighty reason why trivia is important for your life is that it can make you feel good about yourself. It’s impressive to have a bevy of trivia facts in your brain at any time, and improving your memory and recall can serve as a self-esteem boost.
Additionally, it’s easy to feel good once you make trivia a habit because it’s just that fun. Trivia is a relatively low-stress hobby, and once you pick up a handful of facts, you can dole ‘em out whenever you please!
It’s nice to have a pastime you can feel good about. And there’s something impressive about being able to recount fact after fun fact!
Final Words
Thanks for reading through our list of reasons why trivia is important for your life. Whether you’re new to trivia or a diehard fan, we hope this collection of reasons reminded you why you started learning these fun facts in the first place.
Do you have another favorite reason why trivia is important for your life that we didn’t list? Let us know about it in the comments below.
If you want to learn more about the wacky and wonderful world of trivia, congratulations—you’ve come to the right place. Here at Trivia Bliss, we’ve got all there is to know about trivia, from the best new quiz games and apps to try to how to host a trivia night at home to bond with your loved ones, and even just some fun trivia category ideas.
And if you’re looking to improve your life with trivia, check out our massive database of free trivia facts. Whether you’re looking for miscellaneous, randomly-generated trivia lists or themed quizzes, you’re sure to find the tools you need to expand your trivia palette. Enjoy the brain exercise of it all, and don’t forget to have fun!
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