From a young age I can remember pulling myself out of bed on any day I didn’t have school and before I even had breakfast setting myself up at my Xbox to play with my online friends. We would play games the entire day and I thought nothing of it. Though as I got older I realized how many people look down on the idea of playing videogames all day long. Teenagers like myself are often stereotyped to having no social life, when in reality most of them have friends that they have met online and society doesn’t understand how those friendships work, how important they are to us, and how they are actually very similar to in-person friendships.
I don’t know how many times I have heard these expressions, “He must live in his parents basement!”, “They need to get off their butt and try to have a social life” when people refer to teens who play a lot of videogames. I may spend a lot of my free time in front of a screen talking to people on the other side of the country but I am far from lacking a social life. In high school I was in band and on the Color guard team where I made a lot of amazing friends my online friends were just an addition to my life. Many of my online friends tell me stories about the friends they have in person. I may not see these people in person but after spending countless hours talking to them for years I assure anyone who questions me, I most certainly have a healthy social life and so do my friends.
Having played videogames since a young age and later playing games online I have met a wide variety of people from all over the world. I consider many of these people my friends, along with the friends I also have in person. It is common for anyone who plays Xbox online to become a part of a group, very similar to ...
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...to our headsets in effort to be as annoying as we can, or mail a gag gift on someone’s birthday or Christmas. Moments like these make me feel like we’re all hanging out and joking around, I can picture my friends pushing and nudging each other jokingly fighting about who gets to sit on the couch and who has to sit on the floor, acting like a bunch of children.
These friends are my chosen family, I couldn’t ask for better people in my life. Corey, Johnny, Jack, are amazing people who all have jobs, hobbies, and go to school. My best friend and boyfriend Ethan, who I met 5 years ago on Xbox live and have met in person, has helped me through so many rough points in my life, we have had our struggles but always work through them just like any good friend would. We are not lazy, we have amazing friends whom we talk to everyday, and we do not live society’s stereotype.
Back in the day, gamers would use dials and keyboards to move simple two-dimensional shapes across a tiny pixelated screen. Since then, forty years later, friends and family are able to play together in ultra realistic virtual realities. Games are no longer only played by geeky teenage boys spending the day at an arcade. Video games are now for men, women, boys, and girls of all ages. According to a survey taken by 23 participants at McHenry County College on April 22 2014, 96% of them have played video games before, 61% play video games weekly, and 9 of the 16 women surveyed currently play video games. These results show that not only are video games extremely prevalent in modern day life, contrary to popular belief, a good portion of women play them as well. Many different types of personalities play video games as well. Video games are no longer an activity only desired by introverts. Not since the internet has allowe...
RaStereotyping is a way of thinking about groups of people. It ignores the differences of the group, while emphasizing its similarity. One belief, that is a stereotype, is that red-haired people are hot tempered. Another belief is that Scottish people are stingy. Such thinking ignores many even-tempered redheads and generous Scottish people. Stereotyping emphasizes many differences between groups while ignoring their similarities to other people. It ignores that many blond and brown-haired people also lose their tempers. Stereotyping overlooks the fact that many American, Brazilians and French people are stingy.
If you’re a gamer you already know how videogames build a person’s social skills. You go home turn on your council of choice for a relaxing game of Call of Duty, Halo, or Star Craft if you’re in to that sort of game. Most likely the next step is to plug in and put on your head set, immersing yourself in a social experience unlike anything you can find in real life. Most of videogame play is socially interactive. “Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents.” (Jenkins) And it’s not just cooperative game play that provides social growth, but competitive game play as well. “Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen.” (Jenkins) The large misconception here is that videogames are socially isolating, a kid sits in his room and tunes out the rest of the world, while in fact they are connecting to more people than they could po...
Aside from the cognitive aspects, video games are also the tool of social interactions. Friendships can sometimes be developed through playing video games and ultimately keeping them away from drug usage and violent activities. Most of the video games today have either multiplayer or online capabilities or even ...
The term “gamer” tends to be synonymous with “geek” in many people’s minds. They see gaming as a device that absorbs the majority of the time of the user, leaving them as mindless empty, pale husks with no ambitions other than beating that next boss or shooting the enemy in the face. However, few gamers waste their life away. On the contrary, many of these so-called geeks tend to be more social than the average person, and farther down the technological curve than most. For the truth is that gaming is a rather useful and beneficial hobby. It gives people an outlet to focus on, and can connect them with many others worldwide. It can teach and entertain at the same time, and can be a useful distraction at other times. In this essay then, closely examining the gaming hobby in comparison to other methods of entertainment will show that gaming is obviously the better method for using free time and connecting people.
Having access to the Internet can hinder student’s abilities to interact with other students. Keith Hampton wrote in his article “Social Media as a Community,” “Americans have fewer intimate relationships today than 20 years ago.” The reason being is the access of social media sites and other websites via the Internet. Rather than complete assignments or communicating directly, many students secretly pull out their phones or access social media accounts on their computers, which distracts students and hinders interaction. In addition, many teenagers would rather play games or surf the web rather than converse with classmates and form and develop friendships. Removing Internet access can help students interact face-to-face instead of using social media to do so or playing games in free
Although video games have been around for many years, the fun seeming activities are enveloped in controversy. First person shooter games tend to give players the same visual perspective as the character in the game and award points for aggressive behavior, which some people see as an act of encouraging aggression. While there is always the chance of making new friends over public chats in video games, there is also the chance of encountering cyber bullying, which can be hard to handle as time goes on. Video games some sometimes used as a way for someone to escape what is going on around them, sometimes even making the player lose track of time spent playing and like any electronic device with a bright screen, video games can cause sleep loss
Video games currently play a substantial role in our culture as more than half of all Americas play some type of video game. ( Green, Bavelier, 2 ) Although the advancement of video games has gotten a bad reputation, there are still multiple ways that they can be used as helpful. If the right actions are taken, many negative consequences can be avoided and there can be positive outcomes. There will always be a market for violent and sexual video games. (Kearney, Pivec, 500) The time we spend is up to us. Online multiplayer gaming has become a hobby of many Americans and the trend toward online gaming should continue.(Green, Bavelier, 28)
Various electronics are frequently used to go on pointless websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, which ruin society’s social abilities. More and more people use social media on the internet as a communication source. This does not apply merely to kids and teens, but adults as well. Using these sorts of websites as a way of communicating causes many individuals’ social skills to decrease. A plethora of children and teens would rather stay inside and interact with their friends through the internet than go hang out with them. Before technology people were not afraid to go up to a random person and talk to them. Now many friendships form through the internet and these friendships are not genuine. When these “friends” meet in person, they find nothing to talk about. For example, I remember after watching Perks of being a Wallflower, a movie taking place in the early nineties, my friends and I discussed how all the characters communicated in person and during hanging out they played games and talked. Now...
Result from my survey and research indicate that there is a connection between isolation and addiction of video game .The lack of social interaction that results from addiction of video game can cause isolation. Therefore, When addiction comes in to play, it the time to take action and overcome with this issue by regulating the time of playing and limiting amount of money to buy games and finding other activities to do. By doing that, hopefully the people who are addicted like me and spend more hours a week stuck to their computer games are able to acknowledge the real effects of the games that they played on their social life in order to deal with this
The second question is do video games cause you to become anti-social? I would answer this by saying, this could possibly be true if you play offline instead of online because, I know for a fact that the majority of the gamers out there play online which allows them to interact with other players around the world therefore, they’re not anti-social.
Playing video games is perceived as associate degree exciting side of the media landscape and has toughened lots of growth in recent years. There has been an increase within the range of kids WHO use video games in several components of the planet, notably within the us (Hagan,et al. 2002). Among youngsters within the us, taking part in hours for video games have increased from four hours each week within the 1980’s, to concerning thirteen hours per week in recent years. Video games have conjointly taken the eye of the general public, notably by the controversies concerning person shooter games (Anderson, Gentile & Buckley, 2007).
Yet many people are concerned how this impacts there social skills the everyday face to face contact. When playing video games people limit their self’s to social interaction unless it has to do with the game, a lot of people play online and talk to their friends through a headset. When people have face to face contact they develop skills in learning how to communicate with people and eye to eye contact you don’t get that through a video game. Being in a social environment promotes social skills. A social environment can provide opportunities for one to learn how to behave properly in different situations. When playing video games most of the time the person is alone and confined in room. Meaning there is very little social interaction between the person and the game. When people play video games they play in sessions and they can last a long time even all night. People get so wrapped up in playing these games they blow off their friends and family meaning it’s hard to maintain social relationships.
Gaming consoles, computers, smartphones, and much more can be a server for online games. The world of online gaming is literally a global community with millions of users and that term would be called a massively multiplayer online game (MMO). Just within the United States, “it is estimated that video games are played in 67% U.S. homes” (Hastings 2015). Networks such as PSN, Xbox Live, Steam, and Second Life, have millions of players, and with this virtual community many people can be influenced by other users. The community of online gaming allows individuals to interact with a variety of personalities. Although there is a history of addiction, violence, anti-socialism, and other negative factors, many researchers are looking into the benefits of online
The Pew Internet study of US teenagers found that few play alone and most join up with friends when gaming. It found that many used educational games to learn about world issues and to begin to engage with politics. The report also found that gaming had become an almost universal pastime among young Americans.