Video Games: To Play or Not To Play

Introduction

 

This is a serious question that whether violent video games cast harmful impact on children or not? This is a bone of contention amongst the professionals dealing with health issues moans children too. This topic has prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP),   to give a suggestion regarding the children playing violent video games as well as watching violent movies (Albanese, 2015).

The Statement

 

Addiction to video games affects the people in negative manner. It impacts their health, feelings, changes as well as social life by bringing some changes in their behavior. It can also lead them to violence in real life.

Video games and Aggressive Behavior

 

It has been suggested that violent video games give rise to aggressive behavior as the video games are seen as a ‘risk’ factor for increased aggression (Radowitz, 2015). Many psychologists have given confirmation that by playing violent video games children might start showing aggressive as well as callous behavior. The research even shows that a consistent relationship  is found between  violent video games usage as well as  rise in aggressive behaviors , aggressive effect ,  aggressive cognitions as well as decline in pro-social behavior , sensitivity  along with  empathy towards aggression.

 Violent video games are responsible for teaching wrong values and they are harming the kids in a subtler manner.  The reason being as suggested by a psychologist Douglas A. Gentile, whatever one practices again and again it impacts the brain. In a survey conducted in 2008, about the gaming habits of 2500 young people, it was found by Gentile that adolescents as well as children who played more violent games will more likely reported aggressive cognitions as well as aggressive behaviors. Thus it can be said that violent video games are exemplary teachers of aggression (Toppo, 2015).

There are many real life incidents that have occurred to prove that there occurs behavioral change. For example 20 year old Adam Lanza entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where he killed or shot 26 people in a go (Toppo, 2015).

 

Video Games and Health

Video games, violent in nature are found to compliment the already present troubles that a person has. As suggested by Dr. Vic Strasburger, who is a distinguished professor of pediatrics at the University Of New Mexico School Of Medicine, the concept is much deeper than the just violent video games. He has given treatment to many school shooters  and according to him  these kids have four factors  in common or applicable that are : firstly they have been either bullied or abused; secondly  they suffer from mental illness ; thirdly they are totally isolated socially and lastly  they are into the habit of playing violent video games (Albanese, 2015).

Video games are found to impact the brain in repeated manner when played repetitively. Thus if we are practicing certain aggressive ways  of  feeling , reacting as well as thinking , then we will be good in that . According to media scholar Henry Jenkins, currently at the University of Southern California has argued in an essay that a child who shows the similar responses towards a video game, the way he or she does   in case of a real world trauma, might be exhibiting the symptoms of an emotional disturbance (Toppo, 2015).

Ina many cases video games result in smoking as statistical analyses shows that the more the frequency of young adults playing video games, the more frequent will be their involvement in various kinds of risky behavior like drinking or drug abuse. It has been reported that young adults playing video games every day reported to be smoking pot at least twice as often as the occasional players as well as three times as often as those who never played video games (Brigham Young University, 2009).

 Video Games and Social Life

Playing video games casts’ impact on social life as the person playing frequent video games starts avoiding family and friends. It is seen that it might happen that the young adults will start staying aloof from important social settings in order to play video games. The people who are already having tough relationships will find other ways to spend their time and that will be getting immersed in playing video games. It has been found that as the time span of playing video games increased their quality of relationships gets impacted with parents as well as peers as it goes down (Brigham Young University, 2009).

It is the duty of parents to make contribution towards reducing the use of video games as well as bringing improvement of social life of children.  That is why APA has requested the video game industry to design that kind of games which have increased parental control mainly over the amount of violence the games contain (ANderson & Dill, 2000). They want that the developers should design games that are appropriate for the user’s age as well as psychological development (Albanese, 2015).

It is portrayed that females are weaker and this is applicable in their social life as well. Mostly in the video games the female characters are portrayed as weaker ones, helpless or sexually provocative  that impacts  and creates wrong values  regarding the female gender  as well s about the violence as well in general (Yuuki, 2016).

Possible Positive Impacts of Video Games

In many cases, video games are found you be of help as they have helped in improving dyslexia.  Video games are seen as potential tools that help in improving concentration as well as reading amongst the people with dyslexia, thus providing much more solid scientific claims for the scientific researchers. In a new study conducted by Dr. Vanessa Harrar, at Oxford University the findings show a well-documented connection between video gaming as well as sharpened attention skills (Ericson, 2014). But this is only possible if the video games that are being played are not very violent rather the games played should be such that involve higher brainstorming as well as learning etc., and not shooting as most of the video games do.

It has been seen that people suffering from dyslexia are found to have difficulty in focusing as well as in refocusing their attention, thus more likely to cause them to move their eyes in different manner across a text line. The action oriented video games that feature fast paced sensory attention shifts will help the dyslexics in improving their cross sensory skills. Thus helping in promoting higher reading as well as comprehension skills (Ericson, 2014).

Video games as many think do not cause criminal violence. There is found to be very limited amount of research that addresses that whether the video games are responsible for causing the people to commit acts of criminal violence or not (Albanese, 2015). In another report published by APA  conducted by researchers  at Columbia’s  University’s  Mailman Public School  of Public Health  in which  13 researchers  studied the video games  playing habits  of around 3000 children  all over Europe in 2010. They found that children playing video games for five hours at least in a week faced lesser psychological issues as compared to the students who do not play the games at all. Even the teachers of these students gave better ratings to the students who played video games.

There are certain educational games that make the players learn strategy and anticipation along with management of resources, pattern recognition, judging the situation and managing finances (Tumbokon, 2014).The gamers also learn to be a multitasked. Video games also assisting improving hand-eye coordination, fine tune the motor skills as well as spatial reasoning. Thus it can be said that gaming is quite stimulating, as coaxial activity that creates a unique learning experience or the players (Dai & Fry, 2014).

 

Conclusion

The analysis above indicates that question whether playing violent video games casts negative impact on behavior has not been justified or answered completely. Violent video game it seems is a quite broad concept. There is evidence that indicate that playing violent video games result in aggressive behavior amongst the young and children and teaches wrong values. Playing video games also has negative impact on the health of the children, it is seen to have impact on the brain and have resulted in smoking habits too. The social life also gets affected in a negative manner in case of people playing video games as they start avoiding friends and family. On the other hand the video games that are related to learning and researches have even suggested that playing video games is beneficial for the children and young minds as it enhances their cognitive skills as well as contains various social benefits too. Thus it can be said that it depends on what and how much do you consumer the video games and that will result in positive or negative impact of video games on the person.

 

Bibliography

Albanese, G. (2015, AUgust 14). Violent Video Games Create Aggression, but Do They Cause Kids to Commit Crimes? Healthline.

ANderson, C., & Dill, K. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. J Pers Soc Psychol., 772-790.

Brigham Young University. (2009, January 5). Video Games Linked To Poor Relationships With Friends, Family. Retrieved Nov 25, 2017, from Science Daily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090123075000.htm

Dai, D., & Fry, A. (2014, April 24'). Effect of Video Games on Child Development. Developmental Psychology at Vanderbilt.

Ericson, J. (2014, February 13). How Video Games Help People With Dyslexia Read, Focus: Improving Reading Comprehension With Gaming Skills. Medical Daily.

Radowitz, J. (2015, AUgust 17). Study finds that violent video games may be linked to aggressive behaviour. The Independent.

Toppo, G. (2015, July 1). Do Video Games Inspire Violent Behavior? SCientific American.

Tumbokon, C. (2014, April 16). The Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games. Raise Smart Kid. .

Yuuki, A. (2016, March 23). Video Games Teaching the Wrong Values? Retrieved Nov 25, 2017