Play Video Games Good or Bad

Every now and then, we can hear parents complaining about their children or teenagers staring at their video games for long hours non-stop. This addiction is a global phenomenon and appears to lead children and teenagers getting into bad habits, such as their studies because they become preoccupied with the video games. Playing video games do have its pros. However, the disadvantages of playing computer games stills overweight the advantages.

As I mentioned before, playing video games causes people, especially children and teenagers to get into bad habits like neglecting their studies. Academic achievement may be negatively related to over-all time spent playing video games. Studies have shown that the more time a student spends playing video games, the poorer is his performance in school. Besides that, a study by Argosy University’s Minnesota School on Professional Psychology found that video game addicts argue a lot with their teachers, fight a lot with their friends and score lower grades compared to those who play video games less often. Furthermore, other studies also show that many gamers routinely skip their homework to play video games and many students admitted that their video game obsessions are often responsible for their poor school grades.

Besides that, video games nowadays are mostly violent. These games teach children and teenagers the wrong values. In video games, violent behavior, vengeance and aggression are rewarded. Negotiating and other non-violent solutions are often not an option in video games. Women are also often portrayed as weaker characters that are helpless or sexually provocative in the game. Moreover, players learn to associate violence with pleasure by receiving rewards by hurting another character. This undermines moral sensitivity. Under normal conditions, human emotional wiring is designed to abhor violence and feel rewarded for helping others. While those who play violent video games build opposite intuitions that they take into the rest of their life.

Additionally, video games also have bad effects on a person’s health. Researchers believe that electronic games are associated with an increased risk of childhood obesity and can cause overuse injuries of the hand. Besides that, playing too much video game may also cause other type health diseases, such as video-induced seizures and postural, muscular and skeletal disorders like tendonitis, nerve compression and carpal tunnel syndrome.

In a nutshell, playing video games has many negative effects, especially towards children and teenagers. This problem is getting more and more serious as the population of people addicted to play video games is growing. We must pay more attention to this issue and parents should guide their children and control their time of playing video games to prevent them from playing it for long hours. Video games bring a lot of disadvantages, so we should not overplay video games to have a better and brighter future. 


Written by,
Tung Li Shan