For some people, video games might feel like a way to relax but they can also take up so much of our time! Think of how much time is wasted sitting and looking at a TV for hours. Too much gaming makes people not care about their surroundings, lose focus and get less sleep. But some games offer a unique and engaging way to learn. Many young people develop creative thinking and problem solving using video games as a learning tool. An article by Pew Research Center shows just the high number of students that play video games, “The vast majority of U.S. teens (85%) say they play them. Just 15% say they never do, according to the survey conducted Sept. 26-Oct. 23, 2023.” Clearly a vast majority of kids are gaming, so what should they think about the impact of video games in their lives?
Understanding the Negative Impacts
Knowing the impacts of certain genres of video games is important. Naturally exposure to violent games (like the hotly anticipated addition to the Grand Theft Auto series due out this year) will have a negative impact on the player. According to MedicalNewsToday, “Just 10–20 minutes of violent gaming can increase activity in the brain regions associated with arousal, anxiety, and emotional reaction,” So clearly violent games create negative responses in the brain and it overall isn’t beneficial to the player. This negative impact carries over to school where students play video games in class to distract themselves from work they find boring. (Unless the teacher has goguardian set up blocking these games!) An article by pubmed just shows how many children play video games, “More than 90% of children older than 2 years play video games, and three-quarters of American households own a video game console. Children 8 to 17 years of age spend an average of 1.5 to 2 hours daily playing video games.” With both of these factors that we’ve learned about video games you can see where the dots connect. More than 90% of children playing videos are disrupting the brain, increasing anxiety, emotional reactions and all these other mental factors, this shows just how many children are being plagued by the hyper sensitivity from these video games.
Can Video Games Encourage Learning?
Well people may say that “No video games don’t help with understanding and corrupt the brain of our children”. But that’s not all true kids and even adults, Learn strategies and lifestyles from certain video games Such as Roleplaying, RPG, MMO, Survival, Sports. In this article By Understood it shows how Games can flex your mind and think more clearly and more aware. “Some researchers say kids who play these video games improve in three areas: planning, organization, and flexible thinking” This quote shows that games can benefit you in types of ways which can help you be more adequate but. Not all games will help you in a positive way. Video games allow for students to learn and become more creative as well learning their own identities and inhibiting positive factors in their lives as we can see in this article by NYU saying, “The report, the second in the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project, establishes that digital gaming companies and game designers can and should support the well-being of children through the games they produce and demonstrates that digital play has a particularly positive impact on children’s autonomy, competence, creativity, and identity when it responds to their deep interests, needs and desires.” This ultimately shows that video games can also just bring positive factors into your life if they are just used correctly, it all depends on the type of games you play and the type of life that you live to see how video games affect you.
Lets see what people at TCA think
We’ve talked about how students play video games and how it may help you learn skills while emotionally disturbing you, but how does that affect us here at a local level? Let’s see how video games affect us here at TCA.
TCA Heights: Do you play video games and if so how much?
“Um, I don’t play video games but I play roblox.”
-Delaney Caro
TCA Heights: Do you think Video games are harmful to students?
“Um, depends how much you play, depends on how many hours your play”
-Edward Corona
TCA Heights: Do video games help you grow smarter as a person?
“Again, depending on the video game it can help you with like strategy and just puzzles and stuff.”
-Hayden Rodriguez
So? Are video games harmful or beneficial to us?
Video games themselves can cause many types of damage, both physical and mental. Headaches and backaches are very common among these types of damage. These are caused by the constant use of electronic devices that contain addictive video games. In addition, video games transmit bad behavior to young people, but especially to children who have not yet learned to distinguish between good and evil, becoming very harmful to their way of learning. However, not everything is black and white, video games can also be beneficial for youth, they can transmit the desire to be creative, form a team with others to solve difficult problems and improve the learning of new things such as language and other things that have to do with the world.
