With the advancements of technology, the playing of video games has been a part of our lives. From all over the world, “the number of people playing video games rose from 1.84 billion in 2014 to well over 2.5 billion in 2020” (fortunly.com). Furthermore, “In the U.S., the average gamer plays for six hours and 46 minutes each week” (usatoday.com), all of that statistic represents that video games have played an indispensable role in the modern society. However, there are still some prejudices surround it. While there are some people think playing video games will waste time, money and result in harm to people both physically and mentally, others think there are many benefits that can gain from it. For example, there is a blog in the medium.com, titled “The psychological effects of video games”. In this article, the author rationally demonstrates video games’ psychological effects in various aspects instead of just saying the positive or negative things of video games. In this article, I am going to further strengthen the author’s argument and explain why there are adverse outcomes of playing video games.
In the blog article, the author argues that “The idea that violent video games make children more aggressive is shaky at best” (medium.com). For a while, people have been infused idea that people who played violent video games would likely be aggressive since a lot of studies showed that there is some inconclusive relationship between them. However, this theory is rejected by another study conducted by Zendle David, Kudenko Daniel, and Cairns Paul. In their journal article “Behavioural realism and the activation of aggressive concepts in violent video games” (David, Daniel, & Paul, 2017), they claim that there is not sufficient evidence to support that playing violent video games will cause aggressive behavior. Actually, there are no or little effects. According to my experience, I have seen many individuals who played forcible video games representing normal or offensive behaviors. As far as I am concerned, a person’s personality is affected by diverse factors knead together. On the one hand, vicious games are the main genre of video games and they are played by worldwide folks. If it is true that playing violent video games will make people become offensive, why there is no potential phenomenon showing that the crime rate is becoming higher and higher. As a result, it’s not reliable and reasonable to refuse to play video games because of its violent feature. Indeed, an individual’s personality can be affected by family background, education, and a growing environment, while playing violent video games might be just a blasting fuse that forms their aggression.
The two benefits of playing video games stated in the author’s blog articles are: improving attention and boosting memory. The author referenced studies showing that the visual selective attention can be enhanced through playing video games for only one hour. Besides, a study argues that 3-D video games playing can boost older adults’ memory to reach an amazing level of 20-year-old’s ability. Although the author has clearly talked about the extraordinary advantages of playing video games, the more merits are out there. As Josh Eppolito discussed in his blog article, “Many people have become stressed during these times and video games have people de-stress by allowing the user to immerse themselves into a different world where you forget about the one around you” (medium.com). Because of the pandemic of coronavirus, all of the stores and recreational facilities are close, there are limited choices to have fun with friends. Fortunately, video games give us the hope that we can chat together while playing e-sports or normal video games; in addition, though we can’t exercise at the gym, we still can play “Ring Fit Adventure” trying to keep healthy. The other significant benefit we can get from video games is knowledge. Unlike most people who think that playing video games is just leisure, knowledge-based video games can enable gamers to acquire knowledge related to any subject. For example, in a Kingdom World, we can learn the events, people, and items of medieval time as we are walking around in the game world. The most unbelievable thing video games can do is to cure Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, in Gabriel Coronado’s article “Effects of Video Games”, he points out that video games are being able to recreate soldiers and victims’ tragedy so they can exploit it to release their fears and sadness caused from the accident (medium.com).
On the other hand, video game addiction is a big issue. We often see many parents complained that their children always play video games but don’t do homework and housework. If a person ignores his daily life and just play video games, then he is verified as video game addiction. There are countless detriments associated with video game addiction, such as the feeling of loneliness, migraines, diminution of vision, insomnia, and bad academic performance. In short, many studies that critique playing video games are actually criticize video game addiction.
In conclusion, we have understood that we cannot simply attribute people’s aggression to playing violent video games, the reasons behind it are complicated and impalpable. Furthermore, although we can get happiness, health, friendship, intellection, and therapy from playing video games, the problem of video game addiction can’t be neglected. From much statistic data, we can predict the future of video games is brilliant, and we will see more forms of video games. However, video games are just like other technologies, they both have positive and negative sides. When we are playing video games, it’s necessary to distinguish the difference between the virtual world and the real world. For some instances, the virtual world is more attractive than the real world since we can become an idealized person there and do everything we want; besides, in there, we can easily achieve our goals and make proud of ourselves, all of these are reasons that why many people are addicted to it. Therefore, the most important thing we must do is control ourselves, we must remember that the virtual world is unveracious, the real world is the world that belongs to us and worth our pursuit. Video games are our tool to get benefits rather than a thing that manipulate us. We can enjoy playing video games but cannot regard it as our primary thing.
works cited
Zendle, David, et al. “Behavioural Realism and the Activation of Aggressive Concepts in Violent Video Games.” Entertainment Computing, vol. 24, Jan. 2018, pp. 21–29. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.entcom.2017.10.003.
