Video Games: Good or Bad?

1100 Words3 Pages

Many young children and teenagers have heard their mother’s incessant plead to get away from the screen and to go outside or pick up a book for once instead. The urge to play “just one more level” before starting that homework or doing those chores can be quite distracting. But are video games really as awful as Mom exclaims or as brutal as those TV ads depict? It turns out that video games can have a strong impact on participants’ lives in both positive as well as negative ways.

When imagining the typical video gamer, one might envision the stereotypical overweight, slightly nerdy looking man who traps himself within his basement till two every morning leveling his character. This behavior, of course, has poor physical health consequences. Rani Desai noted in her survey of high school gamers that both males and females tended to consume more caffeine (almost three times more), which, in the case of our stereotype, would cause him to sacrifice sleep, a vital mental resource, in order to play games. Desai also found that female gamers tended to have a slightly higher than average body mass index (BMI), however, male gamers and their BMI seemed to be unrelated. Overall, male gamers tended to display a neutral correlation between video games and heath whereas “among the girls, gaming was associated with modestly lower risk of depression and moderate increases in serious fights and carrying a weapon” (Desai et al.). This implies that video games may have a positive effect on mood and a negative effect on aggression.

Numerous studies have been conducted claiming a link between video game violence and increased aggression in players. For example, Gentile notes in his study on the effects of violent video games that “adol...

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...olar. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Gentile, Douglas A., Paul K. Lynch, Jennifer R. Linder, and David A. Walsh. “The Effects of Violent Video Game Habits on Adolescent Hostility, Aggressive Behaviors, and School Performance.” Journal of Adolescence 27 (2004): 5-22. Google Scholar. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Kirriemuir, John. “The Relevance of Video Games and Gaming Consoles to the Higher and Further Education Learning Experience.” Ceangal 2.1 (2002): 1-14. Google Scholar. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Schmierbach, Mike. ““Killing Spree”: Exploring the Connection Between Competitive Game Play and Aggressive Cognition.” Communication Research 37.2 (2010): 256-74.Google Scholar. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Thierer, Adam. “Again, Most Video Games Are Not Violent.” Technology Liberation Front — Keeping Politicians’ Hands off the Net & Everything Else Related to Technology. 21 Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

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