Abdulrahman Alkhattaf
Alan Shelton
07 April 2017
English 110-491
Video Games
Video games were played more than sixty-three million hours last year, which makes it
one of the most popular games around the world. In today’s modern world, many people spend a
lot of time playing video games for more than 6 hours a week. According to McGonigal
“Currently there are more than half a billion people worldwide playing computer and
videogames at least an hour a day -- and 183 million in the U.S. alone. The younger you are, the
more likely you are to be a gamer -- 99% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report
playing video games regularly. The average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by
the age of 21 -- or 24 hours less than they spend in a classroom for all of the middle and high
school if they have perfect attendance. We are investing a remarkable amount of time in games.
5 million gamers in the U.S., in fact, are spending more than 40 hours a week playing games”.
Playing video games can be beneficial as well as harmful. For example, some video
games can improve problem-solving skills, and other can make other people violent. According
to Becker “We already discussed how games can help with memory, but they can also help with
overall cognitive function as well. That means that by sinking some time into your favorite
game, you can be working on becoming more attentive, focused, and perceptive — all while
thinking critically and making decisions, in-game. This is especially important as game-playing
may be a viable treatment option for folks suffering from age-related cognitive diseases, like
Alzheimer’s and dementia”. Also, playing video games can improve the memory and social
skills. According to Kallinikov “Children who frequently played video games ended up having
better academic performance and were also better at establishing relationships with other kids,
scientists claimed”. The amount of time people should play video games because video games
can be addictive, decrease social skills, and it is not a healthy lifestyle to play video games a lot
of time. 4 hours a week should be the limited time for playing video games because it can be
addictive, it inhibits social interaction, and video games are highly important in today’s modern
world but can have a negative effect as well.
The above-mentioned increasing popularity of video games has caused interest among
researchers into the explicit effects of these video games. This paper will delve into both the
positive and negative effects. In so doing, the players will be fully informed of what is in store
for them before they indulge in the various available games. It is also important to note that the
effects are not in any way trivial (Anderson, et. al, 242-279).
Playing video has been associated time over time, with both superiority and improvement
during the performance of spatial and visual tasks. It is quite clear that all these games require
the particular player to practice extracting some spatial information from the screen on which
they are playing the game. Some studies, both correlational and experimental, have proven that
the gamers often outperform the non-gamers on most visual and spatial tasks. The reason for this
is that the gamers have faster visual reaction times as well as better target localization and mental
rotation. In fact, 10 hours of video game play are just but enough to improve both or either
spatial and mental rotation. Surprisingly, even the violent fast-paced games have a positive
impact as opposed to what one would expect. This then forms a ground for opining in the
statement that the video games could amount to better academic performance, which is further
detailed below.
Good or remarkable education performance is the ultimate goal of any learner out there.
It becomes more fun when one realizes that video games, which are rather recreational, can boost
this education performance. This scenario is identical to killing two birds with one stone.
Improvement is seen through a variety of reasons. First, there a number of educational video
games that act as effective teaching aids across a range of domains. Such video games reinforce
the students’ behavior in ways such as the provision of clear objectives and enabling active
involvement. This technique has been found applicable for various subjects with the likes of
Biology, Literature and mostly, Mathematics. As a result, this realization has been exploited
largely at the workplace. Employers incorporate games to teach their employees on skills
suitable for the job. Nutritionists also have had their way through the games to teach people on
how to manage better and healthier lifestyles.
Besides the educational video games, the second booster for education performance is
what all other video games do to a student towards achieving higher grades. The games boost
one’s thinking and enable them to make fast analysis and decisions. A player has to make fast
analysis and decisions every second of the game and thus acts as a workout for the brain.
Cognitive scientists state that the games that stimulate stressful events such as in action games
act as training tools for real world experiences. The games particularly prime the brain to make
quick decisions. Accuracy also results from the games while maintaining speed at the same time.
Last but not least is that the games assist in inductive reasoning and hypothesis testing. Gamers
have to come up with a hypothesis, which is similar to working on a math, science or any class
problem.
Memory goes hand in hand with cognition, which as shown above, has close reference to
video games. The working memory is what people naturally use when they are handling certain
problems at a particular moment (Sestir & Bartholow, 934-942). As such, the working memory
stores the information only for a short period until one completes the problem at hand. Games
such as Battlefield enable the players to effectively judge what information needs storage in the
working memory and what is of no use and thus should not form part of the memory.
Concentration improves greatly, which in effect, boosts the memory. Assuming one has a
maximum concentration in a game; they will capture more details at hand and thus will have
more storage in the memory. This situation trickles down to when one has real-world problems
to handle. This then takes us to the next positive effect that relates to problem-solving.
Problem-solving may not be the last positive effect of video games but it is evident in a
huge capacity as seen in past research studies. All games have an end goal, which often involves
solving a problem after another. Even worse, the problems gravitate towards the higher levels.
The gamer ends up acquiring skills such as resource management, logistics and planning to aid in
solving the problems. Gamers of games like SimCity has had a tremendous impact in solving
problems in the areas of architecture and urban planning. As such, even young children and
teenagers are having fewer difficulties in solving problems at home and school. In essence, the
game also is capable of boosting self-confidence and self-esteem. A win is enough to motivate a
child to do better generally by equipping the child with a winning attitude.
On the other hand, video games have drawbacks that can be far reaching even in real life.
Violence cases among children often erupt from some of the games that they play. Those
children who especially play violent games have aggressive thoughts, behavior, and feelings and
decreased prosocial helping. The violence in the game may reduce the empathy one has for
others. Social skills deteriorate too since most time is spent on some screen somewhere instead
of a live game amongst the gamers. It is common practice to find people locked in the phones
like zombies in the twenty-first century. This indeed is an example of antisocial behavior due to
video games. Where did people leave the conversations they held back in the old days?
Forget about drug addiction and embrace what may be known as video game addiction.
People often play into the night and other extreme cases until morning without even realizing
they have not had sleep. This sleep deprivation is unhealthy and a repetition of it may have future
adverse effects. The video games mostly if not at all times start as a form of entertainment.
According to Gentle, “8.5% of 1,100 youths in a study in the US were classified as pathological
gamers or rather addicted gamers.” Adverse effects will include anxiety or depression, which
may translate to poorer school performance, suicidal thoughts, insomnia, financial problems and
relationship problems among others. It is not only irritating but also disheartening to talk to a
gamer and they do not hear a word even after repetitive communication. Extreme cases may call
for treatment from psychologists.
Work Cited
Anderson, Gentile, & Dill. “Prosocial, antisocial, and other effects of recreational video games.”
Handbook of children and the media (2012): 249-272).
Becker, Samuel. "5 Health Benefits of Playing Video Games." The Cheat Sheet. The Cheat
Sheet, 12 Aug. 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.
Gentile, Coyne, & Bricolo. “Pathological technology addictions: What is scientifically known
and what remains to be learned?” Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology. (2013).
Kanllinikov, Kirill. "Kids Who Play Video Games Might Have Better Social Skills – Study." RT
International. RT, 9 Mar. 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.
Mcgonigal, Jane. "We Spend 3 Billion Hours a Week as a Planet Playing Videogames. Is It
worth It? How Could It Be MORE worth It? | A Conversation on TED.com." TED: Ideas
worth Spreading. TED, 15 Feb. 2011. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.
Sestir & Bartholow. “Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on
aggressive and prosocial outcomes.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46
(2010): 934-942.