The effects of video games on children Essay Example for Free

The effects of video games on children Essay Nowadays, game is so popular that everybody can see its appearances everywhere easily. There are a lot of type of game have been invented such as cosule game, Actually, video games have become a part of childrens life for the past few decades, because they are so convenient that children can play them whenever and wherever to spend time. There are a lot of opinions about effects of video game on our future generation. In some study, video games can be considered the second nature of the modern children, and that virtual world partly reflects the real world. Through that, children can come up and learn more knowledge about the real word. However, video games can also cause a lot of negative effects on children if they are addicted to those. Therefore, most people agree that playing too many video games does more harm than good. The bad effect of game Drifting back to the history of video game, it all started when Atari came up with its first gaming console that included a very simple game of tennis. At that time, the controller had just one stick and one button to play with. Now, we are having huge collection of gaming system with many different types of consoles available in the market with very complex games that requires controllers with two or more sticks and a variety of buttons. Every year, all gaming company makes a race for introducing a new edition or updating better quality for their production. Most people suppose that playing video game causes a lot of negative effects. Video games – a cause of violence and aggression are one of those and mainly mentioned. Video games are very variety of kinds, but it seems that the violent games are dominant because they attract more children than others. Furthermore, in some surveys, there are many violent games that allow the children to play arm bearing characters who can kill anyone that they want, steal cars, and commit many different kinds of crime, such as Mortal Combat, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Doom. They all are very interactive in the violence of slaughtering the opponent (1). In reality, although the video game producers put signs like Real-life violence and Violence level not recommended for children under age of 12 on their box covers, sometimes parents seem to ignore those warnings and let their children play the games that they like (2). Moreover, in some modern violent games, the producers want to attract more children by performing the actions of characters as elaborate maneuver when they get killed. For example, in Half-Life, when a character is killed by others, a bloody and gory scene displays in detail on the screen. What will happen if children play those day by day? How will those affect the naive minds of children? As everyone knows, the answer is that children will become violent and aggressive. Indeed, many studies seem to indicate that violent video games may be related to aggressive behavior. The children who often play more violent games will tend to be at odds with somebody and like fighting and killing. They tend to act in their real life as if they saw and experienced in games. In another aspect, playing too many video games is also the cause which makes children addicted. In a recent study of children in their early teens, the researchers found that almost a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week (3). According to these statistical figures, it is really reasonable to conclude that children today are addicted to video games, and the number of those will increase more in the future. Addicting to video games can make children socially isolated. With the development of science and technology at present, it is so convenient that children can play video games everywhere from large devices, such as computers, laptops, and play stations, to small portable devices, such as DS, and Xbox†¦ With those, children can spend hours in playing without resting. Meanwhile, they may spend less time or even ignore in other activities such as doing homework, reading books, sports, and interacting with the family and friends. As a result, children will become lazy and passive, and they find it hard to integrate into the real life. Finally, video games may also have bad effects on children’s health, especially obesity and eyesight problems. When children are addicted to video games, they tend give them foremost priority. This takes the children away from their other physical activities and can have many health-related problems for the children, as they can get obese if they dont exercise and stay home playing video games. Many studies have also showed that spending hours more time playing videogames in front of television screens than playing real and actual sports that involve physical exercise can cause children to experience many of the same symptoms seen in computer vision syndrome in adults. Moreover, extensive viewing of the game screen can lead to eye discomfort, fatigue, blurry vision and headaches (4). As a result, the number of children who have eyesight problems, such as near-sighted, far-sighted, and astigmatism†¦ is increasing. This is perhaps the worst negative effect that videogames can have on children. On the contrary, as many people confirm, one of the most positive effects of video games is increasing the dexterity and agility of a child and improving their hand-eye coordination (5). The new modern video games that are coming out are extremely complex, and they involve the movement of many different kinds of sticks and buttons on the controllers. These can be very good for children as they learn to make fast connections between what they see and what their hands and fingers are doing. These also allow them to think quickly and improve their reflexes. For example, in shooting games, in some cases, the character may be running and shooting at the same time. This requires the children to keep track of the position of the character, where he or she is heading, the speed, where the gun is aiming, and so on. This process requires a great deal of hand-eye coordination and visual-spatial ability to be successful. Therefore, we find that playing video games can have many different effects, both positive as well as negative on children. Even though the children can have benefits by increasing their dexterity and improving their reflexes, the costs of them, like losing their physical exercise, social activities, and homework, declining health, as well as becoming violent, are too much. Overall, it is important that the parents consider this problem seriously and enforce certain rules and regulations that can limit and control the time of playing video games for their children. Parents also should encourage their children to take part in other physical exercise, sports, as well as social activities that can take children away from video games. References: (1), (2), and (3) according to Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression Grace Shin Submitted by Serendip Update on Fri, 01/04/2008 http://serendip. brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1723 (4) according to Playing Video Games May Cause Eyestrain. Encourage Safe Game Play Guidelines for Your Child By Troy Bedinghaus, O. D. , About. com Guide Updated February 19, 2008 http://webcache. googleusercontent. com/search? q=cache:INT8Liv76l4J:vision. about. com/od/childrensvision/qt/Video_Games. htm+video+games+affect+eyesightcd=1hl=enct=clnkgl=ussource=www. google. com (5) according to Positive Effects of Video Gaming By R. L. Cultrona, eHow Contributor http://www. ehow. com/about_5370127_positive-effects-video-gaming. html.