Is Gaming Harmful?

Is Gaming Harmful? Video and computer games, like many popular, entertaining and addicting kid activities, are looked down on by many parents as time wasters, but why? , is it because they are harmful? , or is it simply because they are spending too much time on them instead of studying. Both have many good arguments, but I am going to write about the one in which I feel are most valid. One of the many good points against gaming is that children, teenagers and adults alike are losing sleep over video games because they are staying up all night and letting their “addiction” take over.

The definition of addiction is: “The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something. ” And anyone who likes and plays videogames has experienced this at some point. Its not only kids that think about going home from school to play video games, many adults think about at work too, the average game player is 30 and has been gaming for about 12 years. This means that many people, no matter of their age or sex, are putting video games before their school or work by missing out on important sleep and not putting their full concentration into their work.

On the other hand, Gaming has been proven to increase social skills in young people as most games include a multiplayer feature that encourages people to play the game with others, whether it be online with friends or sitting together which is important for young kids growing up as it helps them make friends and sustain relationships. It also helps them realize how important it is to be sociable when they are starting school or a new job.

Although some could argue that video games can do children social harm as many children play there selves for many hours each day and rarely interact with their family or friends. They could also argue that video games can cause great physical harm. The physical harm can occur when the child spends long hours of concentration on fast movement or because of the screen flicker. Also when children play video games they sit in for long hours that in the long run will stunt their natural growth and damage their backbone.

Video games are more commonly known as a hobby you do sitting down somewhere comfortable and relaxing but what most people fail to realize is that there are a new type of video game emerging that get you on your toes and exercising. These include such consoles as PlayStation Move, Xbox Kinect , Wii, etc. These devices are designed to keep you active while you game and can give you a good physical work out instead of playing seated, these kind of games also can give you a good mental work out as most games for these console require lots of problem solving and also help improve your hand eye co-ordination skills.

However, there are some that would say playing videogames can cause mental and psychological harm. Their reasons for this are they believe that when playing video games, children do not apply much mental effort and believe that video games are not creative enough. This could lead to the child developing lazy mental habits and also being impatient as real life is not as fast as their game might be. There are also some that believe that children can become violent because they become habituated to the violence that occurs in some games they might play.