Have you ever been comfortably relaxing playing any video games during your free time and wondered what is happening to your body while playing ? Majority would say video games would rot your brain, make you lazy or even become violent,but studies and even myself say otherwise. Video-Games have become a major part of kid’s and young adult’s lives. It has enhanced their social skills,teamwork and strategizing abilities, along with improved brain speed, and multitasking skills. My goal in this paper is to inform you that video gamers aren’t destroying their bodies or throwing away their lives, instead they’re setting themselves up for success.
To achieve this goal, I organized my paper into main sections, the different types of benefits such as cured diseases in sick kids who play or played the video games , improved motor skills with the help of action games , fitness amelioration caused by playing games with physical activity, and even advanced behavior by being a villian in a game.
For example, a 2013 study focused their investigation on the effect that playing action games such as “Rayman Raving Rabbids” , have the possibility to aid children with dyslexia between the ages of seven through thirteen. It not only aids kids with dyslexia but anyone who has suffered from cerebral palsy , addiction of substance abuse , successful treatment of ambhyopia and also stroke victims. Reduced impulsiveness action games improved performance in a test of the ability to refrain from responding to non-target stimuli. Playing video games could easily become a substitute for going to a doctors appointment and receiving medical treatment.
Another debatable subject matter is that video games switch children’s and teens’ behavior in a negative way such as becoming more aggressive or hostile. Researchers have suggested that doing horrible things in game may actually make you a more sustainable person. In the study, gamers who violated their self moral code underwent genuine guilt , so they behaved better in real life to cope with their guilt . Most kids and teens can arrive home after a bad day at school , start playing video games and their whole mood switches. Video games have evolved into stress relievers for most people who are stressed from school, work, etc.
More research has been done to prove that there is evidence to show that they make people smarter or at least more cognitively flexible, which is a huge aspect of intellect. The results suggest that the distributed brain networks assisting cognitive flexibility can be activated by engrossing video game experience that stresses maintenance and swift manipulation of multiple information sources. . Most participants in these researches saw higher results in their short term memory exams and also extended motor skills such as quick visual clue, improved eye-hand coordination and precise muscle movement which are both essential for practice . Further research is being investigated to show increase in video gamers’ attention spans which sounds like an amazing hypothesis.
The specific area of the brain that is being affected by playing video games is something that is a mystery to most and should be ubiquitous throughout all teens and parents. Researchers looked at twenty-fort volunteers who participated and played the video game for thirty minutes daily for two months while under an MRI machine which examines the brain functions and brain activity and they discovered that they had increased they grey matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex and the cerebellum. This is important because advancing the right hippocampus advances the role in how we process our thoughts and consolidate our information, the additional grey matter in the cerebellum improves our muscular activity and functionality and the right prefrontal cortex is where ones’ personality is originated.
We all wish losing weight and being in shape wasn’t so strenuous and it was fun, but we just haven’t been searching in the right place. Video games have become so advanced in our generation that there is video games out there designed to help with fitness and weightloss. For example, the “WII FIT” is a video game where it scans and records your actions and it escorts you through training such as yoga .It has had a enormous resurgence in the last year and the players are loving the results and the process of playing a video and working out at the at the same time. Playing these excer games help with the circulation of the blood, joint flexibility especially in the knees and hip joints, coordination and balance. Thanks to technology, majority of these games keep track of your progression and helps you set a goal to keep you motivated and determined to become successful.
If you were to ask a parent with a child who is a gamer, more than likely they’ll admit to them being “anti-social”. Although people tend to think playing video games makes you anti-social numerous studies have shown that playing video games actually makes people more soical. Socializing does not mean going out all the time , it means being able to communicate with other people and being able to hold a conversation. Playing video games allows us to cooperate and communicate, for example, in most action games intell is very important aspect of performance and achievement. Players will let their teammates know locations of enemies, objective information , or even just have laughs by telling jokes. Socializing through video games will assist your real life social skills which will be helpful during a job, interview and etc.
Many video games are themed off of real historic events, such as assassins creed, 300, grand theft auto, and super battle tank. Starting with assassins creed, this games setting is back where templar knights were common. It teaches us how they were dominant during that era and how they came to be about. Grand theft auto is heavily influenced by the los angeles gang violence in the past 50 years. It gives us a insight into the life a gang member and a millionaire during gang violence. This game is teaching us that gang related activities are very real and serious and i think it will let children see the true life of gangs and it will inform them to stay away and to not be associated with them. The video games 300 is about a leader of gladiators and how they used to battle for hours at a time, strategies during battle and how life was with kings and queens ruling the land while trying to be overthrown. Last but not least, the action game super battle tank gave us information of the aspects of war. In the game you drove a tank destroying other tanks, but it showed us the artillery during WW1. It also taught that during the war there was a stalemate and they hid in trenches on the other sides of no man land. These video games are a very reliable source of historic information and they should be ubiquitous with school teaching.
A big indirect benefit you wouldn’t expect is that video games enforce dedication. Many video gamers spend hours at a time sometimes even days playing just to become the greatest. This is important because it shows that they can have dedication and the willpower to achieve their goal. With this ability they will become very motivated for their school work, profession, or any task that needs to be completed. Video games give teens and kids the ability to overcome any obstacle and surpass their goals no matter what.
In conclusion, video games are very important to our culture and lives. The next time you’re sitting comfortably on your couch playing video games just know you aren’t hurting your body or rotting your brain, you’re setting yourself up for success by advancing your motor skills, you’re becoming more intelligence, more fit and healthy, increasing your brain activity and functionality,becoming more motivated and determined, and you’re even learning about history more than you’ll ever learn in school just by playing video games. If you’re ever being told that videogames are unhealthy or a waste of time you now know that they’re wrong and why they should sit down and pick up a controller too.
