Essay on Video Games: Harmful Or Helpful?

This is the big question these days since technology is becoming bigger and is taking over our lives more than ever especially with the pandemic. After looking at multiple websites it turns out that video games can be BOTH helpful and harmful. Now you may be asking yourself, how on earth could video games be both harmful and helpful for your children? Well, it all depends on how long a person spends playing games and which games they play, but do all of the negative effects of video games way down the positive?

Research shows that ‘letting your children play video games can help them in ways’ such as increased accuracy, multitasking, enhanced logic and creativity, development of decision-making skills, improve attention and working memory performances, and finally enhanced patience, concentration and perseverance. After looking at all of these wonderful things your child can learn while playing video games you should be able to say that children should be encouraged to play video games, not only to help develop these skills said above but as a way to have fun and as an escape from all the stress of school and other things that are going on in their lives. 

As parents,  you should be responsible about how much time and which games your children play, and when looking at all the downsides of gaming it can become quite overwhelming. This brings me to my second point about why too much video games or certain video games can be harmful for your children. When children are overly exposed to video games there can be some downsides that come along with it. A few of these downsides are violence, aggression and anxiety, mental health problems, decrease in academic performance, game addiction which you can see signs physically and emotionally, social isolation/ poor social development, association with wrong values and the one I feel is most concerning is the physical health issues such as increased weight/ obesity, seizures, musculoskeletal disorders, and nerve compression. When looking at these downsides you can see that a lot of them are quite concerning, for instance, the physical and mental issues. 

Children also tend to pick up and produce the behaviours and actions they see whether that is from their parents, friends, a television show or even video games. This is the classic ‘monkey see, monkey do’ act that many people talk about. When children view violent or aggressive video games they tend to think that behaviour is tolerated so they start acting more aggressive and violent themselves after exposure to these games after too long. This is something I picked up on from my psychology class last semester and I feel it is important for more parents to know this information. 

In conclusion, video games are a great way to let children relax and enjoy personal time but when overly exposed it can be harmful. As parents, you just have to monitor how much time your children spend on these games not only for their health but also to help prevent them from becoming more aggressive and violent towards others.