Negative Effects Of Video Games

Video games and their effect on mental health have been debated topics since video games were first commercially released in 1971. The effect is commonly displayed as negative in most media, but what most media outlets project is not always true. The effects that video games can have on the human mind range from beneficial and formative to negative and not so beneficial. The form of entertainment known as “video games” or “computer games” has been controversial since the early nineteen-seventies, and as such innumerable individuals have debated whether or not they have destructive effects on the human psyche. Scientific studies have been designed and publicized to ascertain which side of the argument is correct, however, in the words of Daphne

The results showed that the effects of video games on academic performance were entirely negligible, if they were present at all, across a group of over one hundred and ninety-two thousand students throughout twenty-two countries. These results were cross-referenced and compared with over twenty other studies of the same and similar subjects, and the results were conclusive. The academic performance of gamers is not the only matter that concerns people, however, as there are many misunderstood and not so well received behaviors and mannerisms that gamers display, a main concern being with the act of “gender switching” in online

The act is greatly questioned by non-gamers, as to many outside of the gaming community, it appears that gamers want to mask their identity or that they believe that assuming a different gender role is normal, which in turn sparks controversy about how games change the way gamers perceive gender roles and sexuality, but, according to a study preformed by Rosa Martey, this ideology is not the reason some men choose to play as female characters and vice-versa. Her study shows that the majority, by a large margin, of those who gender switch show no signs of wanting to mask their identity, and either reinforce and support idealized notions of gender roles and sexuality or have a strategic reason for playing as the opposite gender; which is contrary to what the average non-gamer suspects. With both non-gamer expectations of gamers and the mindsets of the gamers being extremely variable, the study could only demonstrate what the supposed effect gaming had on the averages of both groups displayed, and as such, the extreme variables and rarities among the groups are not shown in the results. Even though the “average” of both groups are the focal points of the information presented by the study, the act of gender switching is actually primarily present within a specific genre of games, known as MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online