The definition of the word “community” in a dictionary dictates the following “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common” (Oxford Dictionary). From such a definition, video games where the users are able to interact with other people can be considered a community. All the users of such games have a common characteristic: they all like the game. However, there are a lot of questions regarding this issue. For instance, what are the effects of such communities? Are those effects good or bad for us? Are video games changing the way we communicate? Are they affecting our personal relationships? In this paper, I will not only discuss these questions, but I also will talk about how important the face-to-face communications are in our lives. Some important numbers that need to be recalled are that 68% of the US households play video games and the average age of a gamer is 34 years old. This statistical data shows that contrary to the common believe that video games are for kids and young adults the gamers are mostly adults, therefore, the problems discussed here are relevant for the entire society. According to a study made at Brigham Young University by Laura Walker, faculty member, and Alex Jensen, undergraduate student, video games are highly related to poor human relationships. Their study consisted of collecting information of 813 college students from all over the country regarding the time spent playing video games and the quality of their relationships with friends and family. The results showed that as the video games usage rate was higher the quality of their relationships was poorer. The study was not focused to find a reason to those results but, if we think a little about t... ... middle of paper ... ...ommunities and face-to-face communications aside just because there is an easier way of doing it, forgetting about the importance of the role these kind of things play and will play during our entire life. Works Cited Brigham Young University. "Video Games Linked To Poor Relationships With Friends, Family." ScienceDaily. 25 January 2009. 24 February 2011. Dretzin, Rachel, dir. “Digital Nation.”Frontlie, 2010.DVD. Entertainment Software Rating Board. “Video Game Industry Statistics”, ESBR.com, 2010. Web. 2 Feb. 2011. Hartley, Deanna. “The Cultural Effects of Video Gaming.”Certification Magazine.Certfification Mag., Apr. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2011. Huggins, Kim. “Face to Face Communication, 5 Reasons Why it’s Still Important.” The Women’s Information Network. n.d.Web. 24 Feb. 2011. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press.Web. 24 Feb. 2011.
Imagine for a moment, a world of death. For 200 years your family has been sealed away with a thousand other people, to protect you from the dangers outside. Now your father has disappeared, and it’s up to you to find him. After a harrowing escape from your subterranean home, you walk through a tunnel to the outside world, past dead bodies, stretched out in front of the door, as if to say “don’t leave us out here to die!” As you walk through the gate to the outside, and as your eyes slowly adjust to the sun you have never seen, a wasteland emerges before you. The world is devastated, destroyed and annihilated. Broken twisted hunks of metal lie next to a sign on the side of the mountain saying “scenic overlook” on your right, the broken remains of the interstate bridge stand as a monument to a destroyed culture. Petrified trees are all that remains of the local fauna. Off in the distance, all that remains is destruction. While you may think of this stunning visualization of a wonderful novel, this is actually one of the opening scenes from Todd Howard and Bethesda Game Studios’ “Fallout 3.”
Video games have positive and negative aspects. Acording to a study, those who spend hours and hours in playing ‘civic games’ were found to take more part in different community services like social work, politics or protests, as compared to those who never took interest in vidoe games. Hence video games are proved to increase one’s social interaction skills. The kind of friendship and ethics that are learnt by the young gamers while playing video games provide evidence that they are not completely harmful to our society. (Heins, 62)
As technology continues to forge ahead concerns about its effects on the populace are raised. Whether it be microwave ovens causing cancer or cell phones causing accidents, people are always interested in researching, and often condemning, these new products. Such is this case with videogames. Ever since PongÒ swept the nation, scholars have been researching videogames' effects on children. The most popular aspect of videogame research is whether or not games increase aggression. A video game is any console or PC based interactive game, aggression is any thoughts or behaviors related with the intention to cause harm. Contrary to popular belief, there is no reliable correlation between videogames and aggression.
By far the largest concern of technology today is video games. There have been so many experiments and studies to try and figure out if video games have a negative or positive effect on our children. A growing body of research is linking violent video game play to aggressive cognitive, attitudes and behaviors (D.A. Gentile, 2004). Video games can obviously be dangerous for our children causing aggression, bad performances in school and obesity. Although we cant blame all of these problems on the use of video game...
Gentiles explain the positive and negative effects of video games on children. Gentile warns that kids are spending more time playing a video game every day and parents need to do something about it before it goes out of hand. Gentile also does several types of surveys and experiments on children one that plays for eight hours while another plays for five hours. The author agrees that kids today are spending excessively much time in front of a game system and parents are not doing anything about it to stop it. Gentile also suggests that if parents do not do anything about it bad thing will happen to their kids including having aggressive behavior.
First video games are not harmful to the public quite the contrary actually. Many video games encourage social behavior and team work whether that is the two player cooperative shooter game that two brothers play together working as a team inspiring positive feelings overriding the negative ones as stated in the study coauthored by David Ewoldsen. Or a family on game night all playing a game together and having a great time and bonding together because of the experience. And many games today don’t stop there at just play together and have fun. Many games promote teamwork skills through puzzles which can be solved together, or enemies that the players must work together to defeat. These positive social effects are not limited to one’s family but extend into online play, where one can converse and enjoy his time with others, creating entire
One day I came home after a long day at school after a practice tired and not wanting to do anything. I had a paper and some other things I needed to do for homework, but I decided to blow all that off until later. I walked into my room and see my PS3 console and instantly I turn it on and play until midnight and still had done no homework. It was like instant attraction, like a magnet. If I could go back in time I would not have played video games. Why you ask? Ever since I was a child I would play video games and I feel this has affected my lifestyle in many ways. In this paper, I would like to explain in four ways how playing video games has affected me physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. The fact that I have missed out on so much in my life has finally caught up with me. I was told it would. It hasn’t been all bad. There are some positive things. I am not arguing for or against video games, but this subject is personal. Video games have become just that-personal.
Social scientists have been examining the effect that video games have on behavior. From the introduction of video games in the 1980s, there have been numerous research studies to this effect (Andersen & Taylor, 2008). The issue has become even more significant in the modern context because these video games have become bloodier and more realistic than ever before. Even though boys play these games more than girls in America, the consumption of video games has generally been high. Carey (2013) indicates that 32% of these gamers are below the age of 18. Therefore, it would be crucial to evaluate the effects that these video games have on the behavior of such children.
The average adolescent spends a major part of the normal week watching or interacting with some form of the media’s products. Video games are one of these media based mediums and have become increasingly popular since the 1980’s. According to a report in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, "Female gamers spent an average of 44 minutes playing on the weekdays and one hour and four minutes playing on the weekends, and male gamers spent an average of 58 minutes playing on the weekdays and one hour and 37 minutes playing on the weekends" ("Video Game Play Among Adolescents"). What can we understand from this evidence? The fact is that adolescents, male or female, are spending tremendous amounts of time each day sitting in front of a screen with a controller in hand.
Video games have been around about 50 years and they contribute a big part of the U.S. economy. People interact with video games every day throughout different ways, such as cell phone devices, computers, consoles or whatever which has a screen on it. In fact, it has always affected people’s lives. However, not so many people understand the benefits of video games. With video games, people can not only relieve themselves from stress and suffering, but it also improves people’s social experiences while they are exchanging and absorbing knowledge with other people; more than that, people can learn many other things from video games which can help them to achieve great things in lives.
Video Games have been accused of making youth violent and aggressive, making people isolate themselves from society, and for lowering the attention span and the ability to concentrate in youth. These claims have yet to be supported by several well organized studies and have never been more than a correlation to any of these claims, and in fact have been disproven on several occasions. Adam Eichenbaum (2014), author contributing to the American Journal of Play, concluded a discussion on the research on video games say that “Today’s video games are much more than entertainment. They are also weapons in the fight against declining mental capacities in old age. They promote job-related skills. And they are a model of how to teach children complex and difficult tasks and abilities. As with any technology, video games are neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad.” (pg. 67) Video games are not the waste of time that they are accused of being, nor are they damping the development of today’s youth. If anything is to be said about video games is that in them lays a great potential for good; that video games serve as tools for people who want to make a change in society, whether the changes are positive or negative lie in the hands of those that choose to use video games as tools. These are not unrealistic or histrionic claims; video games, after all, are more than just
"Violent video games and young people." Harvard Mental Health Letter 1 Oct. 2010. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.
Most people think that video games are harmful and waste of time. As a result, the main question of the research is how video games can influence on children and many minor questions come to mind about video games: Do video games influence a child’s psychological development and make them more aggressive and violent? Do video games affect a child’s grades? What are the influences of video games on children? Many people don’t have much information about video games and how video games may effect on people’s behavior, health and mind.
Video games are often portrayed in a negative manner because they are seen as having an "addictive" quality. Addiction has been defined as "A primary, chronic disease, characterized by impaired control over the use of a psychoactive substance and/or behavior. Despite the wonderful benefits games offer as diversions, spending too much time, to the neglect of normal life duties, and social development with direct contact with others can and often does happen. Clinically, the manifestations occur along biological, sociological, spiritual and especially psychological. Some psychological effects that affect the behaviors are failure to play outdoor games, difficulties in work or school, telling lies to everyone, decreased attention to personal hygiene, decreased attention to family and friends, and disturbances in the sleep cycle. Many video game addicts have strug...
The advantage of playing online game is that it allows people to communicate to numerous numbers of others from different cultural backgrounds and countries. In the game, a gamer may want to exchange his item with someone. Therefore, he/she has to negotiate with others. Repetition of this negotiation can develop a gamer’s social skills. The disadvantage of online gaming is that spending most of free time in front of a monitor wills remove teenagers from their friends and society. Online games are not for entertainment purpose only.