The year is 2019; We reside in an era in which technology has become ubiquitous in our everyday life. One piece of technology in particular which has had a profound impact on our lives is video games. The stereotype has long persevered that video games and those who play them suffer from many negative effects. Many people visualize gamers as an eclectic group of individuals who do not make up a noteworthy portion of the population, and video games themselves are often treated as a childish recreational activity without a real purpose or intrinsic value. These absurd notions could not be any further from the truth.
Video games have an appeal that transcends many demographic boundaries, such as age, gender, ethnicity, or educational attainment. We neglect to think about the extent and impact profoundly on our culture, our history, and our way of life. Video games impact society as a whole in an extremely beneficial way: They can be used to help attain goals and rehearse working towards them. They provide ample feedback, and reinforcement, along with boosts in self-esteem and confidence, and can also assist an individual in maintaining a record of their behavioral change. Video games' impact help facilitate learning; they permit individuals to experience novelty, curiosity, and challenges in a controlled, personalized environment that further stimulates the learning process. Lastly, purported negative effects such as addiction, increased aggression or violence, and various health consequences such as obesity tend to get far more media coverage than the positives.
As video games become more and more realistic, captivating, and exciting, more and more children and teenagers are becoming immersed in them. With the evolution of the internet, video games have transformed from a primarily single-player experience to one of the most social media in the world. The advent of Massively Multiplayer Online games has allowed gaming to become an internationally communal platform. In fact, 62% of gamers play games with others, either in-person or online. 77% of gamers play with others at least once a week, and 47% of gamers play social games. In addition, an overwhelming majority of gamers play games with their friends and family: 14% play with their spouse or significant other, 18% play with parents, 32% play with other family members, and 42% play with friends.
What do all of these statistics tell us? Video games have become an essential aspect of most Americans’ lives. For far too long people resisted acknowledging video games as relevant and beneficial to society. Instead, they would dismiss them reasoning that they were a mere waste of time, devoid of a real purpose. As aforementioned, these absurd notions could not be any further from the truth. When playing a game, you are an active participant; not a passive spectator. Because video games allow player decisions to affect what takes place on the screen and within the story, games have the potential to be a different experience every time. When we are playing a game – when we are tackling unnecessary obstacles – we are actively moving toward the positive end of the emotional spectrum. All of the neurological and physiological systems that underlie happiness – our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centers – are fully activated through gameplay.
Additionally, there exists a wide array of research that evidently showcases that the benefits of playing video games greatly outweigh the negatives. For instance, video games provide a social form of entertainment, they encourage collaboration and teamwork and they offer countless opportunities to interact with others. Video games also contribute tremendously to developing capacities in fields such as reading, mathematics, technology, and problem-solving situations.
A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with endless optimism, on something in which we excel and value. Games have always been a way to improve the quality of life. It’s Their primary function: to create real positive emotions, real positive experiences, and real social connections during a difficult time. It is still the primary function of games for us today. They serve to improve our real life.
Moreover, they serve this purpose wonderfully, better than any other tools we have. No one is free from boredom, anxiety, loneliness, or depression. Games solve these problems quickly, cheaply, and dramatically. In today’s society, video games help to fulfill genuine human needs that the real world is currently unable to satisfy. Games provide rewards in a manner that reality is not capable of doing so. They are teaching and inspiring and engaging us in ways that reality is not. They are bringing us together in ways that reality is not. Reality does not offer up as quickly the carefully curated pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments such as video games. A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, on something we are good at while enjoying ourselves wholeheartedly. In essence, video games give us an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity. Compared with games, reality is unproductive.
Games give us more precise missions and more satisfying, hands-on work. Satisfying work always starts with two things: a clear goal and actionable next steps toward achieving that goal. Video games are a purposeful, thoughtful, and active escape, and most importantly a constructive escape for most individuals. Gamers who have grown up being intensely engaged by well-designed virtual environments are hungry for better forms of engagement in their real lives. They are seeking out ways to be blissfully productive while cooperating toward extreme-scale goals.
Throughout the last decade, many stereotypes and false claims have been formulated as it pertains to video game usage. Many skeptics believe that they cause individuals to become violent, antisocial, and shrewd in other things with a negative connotation. For example, most Americans think there is a direct connection between video games and violence. However, for many experts, no evidence or link exists which proves that video games promote or foster violent behavior in any way. Video games may also be responsible for sleep deprivation within specific individuals. The more we play, the more we are engaged, and the less time we give our brain to rest. This is an unusual behavior, certainly amplified by video games that have online multiplayer. For this reason, it is indispensable that individuals balance their video game usage with outdoor activities. It is also essential to set boundaries and limits at the beginning of a gaming session.
Perhaps equally as debated as the issue of violent video games, video game addiction, and video game obsession have become growing concerns amongst both the scientific community and the general public. The individuals who spend hours and hours of their time playing video games are not always able to be on the receiving end of the positive effects of video games. Video games may also cause them to exercise less and develop unhealthy sleep schedules. For most teenagers, however, playing video games is just another activity to share with their friends. For other extreme users, however, it can sometimes become an activity that causes dependency and isolation to develop. Young people who consume many video games may tend to exercise less and as a result, develop bad eating habits. In adolescents, of course, there can be extreme cases of addiction and isolation that stems from video games. With that being said it is important to note that the cause of gaming addiction usually stems from adolescents already suffering from particular social or psychological issues before pathological gaming occurred; therefore, video games themselves should not be considered entirely responsible in that regard.
Often accused of their violence or addictive power, video games can also, in the eyes of some researchers and designers, have beneficial effects on health or education: They significantly improve our imagination and act as effective anti-stress and coping mechanisms. Moreover, they considerably improve and help in expanding our imagination along with critical thinking. The vast majority of video games stimulate attention, motivation, concentration, memory, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving skills, along with our visual recognition of characters and objects. Video games have also become a productive outlet through which individuals can alleviate stress in their lives. In the present day, where everyone is continuously confronted with a plethora of societal obligations, video games allow individuals to feel relieved from some of the societal pressure they may be facing in their regular lives. In essence, video games have become an effective way to channel people’s impulses and frustrations. They act as a valve and allow us to release any pressure we may be facing at our own individual convenience.
It is my conviction that video games have been designed to improve the quality of life of individuals. They prevent suffering and create real, widespread happiness. As a society, we may make value judgments and hold moral debates over the addictive and obsessive nature of video games. However through all that, a critical point is being missed and unaddressed: The fact that so many people of all ages, all over the world, are deliberately choosing to spend so much time in a virtual world is a sign of something truly formidable. It manifests a truth that we need to recognize urgently: The real world does not offer up as easily the carefully designed pleasures, the thrilling challenges, and the powerful social bonding afforded by virtual environments such as video games.
While yes, arguments can still be made for video games and their connection to violence, there can conversely be even more compelling arguments made for video games and their beneficial, positive, effect on our world today. After having reviewed all the harmful effects that games can potentially have on us, it is unquestionable that they have an exponentially more significant positive and desirable impact on society than negative.