Everyone knows that video games are entertaining especially at times when there is nothing to do, but not many, especially the adults providing their children with the games know that it can be extremely harmful. After reading those articles online, studies have proven that video game addiction is similar to that of having a gambling or alcohol addiction. It has never crossed my mind that addiction to video games can be classified as something so dangerous and life threatening. Although it is not as severe has having a constant state of yearning for alcohol, it can still ruin lives.
Every now and then I watch the news channel and I find that an emotionally wrecked thirty-five or forty-five year old male being put behind bars because he was addicted to alcohol. Can you imagine a sixteen year old kid reenacting that forty-five year old because he did what he thought he could do in video games? Maybe the kid, after playing countless hours of the violent games provided by the gaming industry today, thought that he can get imaginary and start shooting the “bad guys” with his or her daddies hand gun to be the hero. Video games can be fun but it also needs to be limited to a certain extent.
Video games are what kids do these days. Anything from Super Mario to World of Warcraft. I remember going to school and hear kids talking about video games throughout recess and lunch. I have also joined in a couple of the discussions they had putting my own perspectives about the “current” games. I’ve never asked or bothered trying to know, but I’ve always thought that as soon as they opened the front door to their house, they were on the computer playing games. With no disrespect to any of them, I really had thought that they had nothing else to do because they were so used to playing games to feed their addiction to everything. They were always in a group of two or three and was never social as they would not expand outside of their group. Kimberly Young, PsyD, Clinical director for the center of the Center for Online-Addiction stated “an intelligent child who is unpopular at school can “become dominate in the game.” “The virtual life can becomes more appealing than real life.” You can’t blame the kids for finding comfort in their games back home because it was surely a lot easier than trying to be “big” at school although, at such an early age, you can expect consequences.
One thing I’m sure we can all agree on is that games are definitely something we can all play to become the imaginary hero or heroine or the worlds greatest villain. Weather it’s just changing your characters clothes or finding the right hairstyle that you have always wanted on the video game character, you find it satisfying and for some, overwhelming. Being a hardcore video gamer is not the least bit dangerous as being an alcoholic or a drug addict but it does ruin the character you can be in real life opposed to that of the character you want to be in video games. Undeveloped social skills and poor physical activity can seriously ruin who you can become. In todays world, people that have strong social skills and a healthy physical appearance is prized and is favored among others. Engaging in the entertainment video games provide, exercise of anti-addiction for the game should be maintained with self control. Parents with young children should set a limit to the amount of time spent on playing video games, as I would expect that the last thing a parent would want to see is their own children struggling for their own lives after something they thought would be so harmless.
Ya, video games are clearly not as harmful as drugs, alcohol, and I might add, smoking. Not as expensive as gambling either.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see a statistic about how many hours people are watching television as compared to video games. Even a simple hours per national capita would be interesting.
I don't see anyone complaining at the moment about that, but there are certain parallels.