Videogames

Children and Games: Simple Fun or Deadly Addiction?

Over many years, society has been worrying about the effects that video games have over the new generations. The majority of parents care about their children’s future and mental health. They are trying to keep them away from anything that can represent a threat to their children. This means that many are trying to raise children as far awayas possible from video games. The question is: are video games influential on kids’ way of living, even if they live in a safe home environment? Are the effects the same on children who live in a bad home environment? These are the questions that are studied trough out this essay.
Parents worry about the violence that children might learn from video games. For years, I have heard my grandmothersay that Pokemon- a video game that belongs to the company Nintendo- is teaching children that making animals fight and compete against each other is fun and can bring enjoyment. Her point of view is not far from right. Pokemon, in fact, is about a constant quest to become the best Pokemon trainer in the world. The way to get that title is by making the little pocket monsters fight each other tohelp capture all the existing Pokémon. In fact, the trainer of the winner will keep the Pokemon that loses the match. If the player gets to the end of the game, he should have captured 493 Pokemon. This indeed will take a lot of time and effort.
As in movies and T.V shows, video games also have a different set of categories. I can recall a few like Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat that involvefighting and blood in order to become the ultimate master of the martial arts. However, as I said before, there are different categories of games. Games like Pokemon do not contain blood or violence. Pokemon, in fact, is magnificent game because: it takes the player on a journey that requires skill and thought. It stimulates the player's mind and has him thinking on different levels. A Pokémonbattle can be compared to a game of chess. Every move counts, and strategies are key. In addition, Pokemon is an epic game that never ends and requires a lot of interaction and reading of instructions that help to the stimulation of neurons. In fact, in order to progress on the game, the player has to read the short stories that appear on the screen, and the player has to analyze and memorize thedifferent ways and paths towards the end.
James Paul Gee- a professor who studied video games and their impact on the player- in his book Why Games Are Good For Your Soul says: “The 19th Century was infinitely more violent than the 20th Century in terms of crime (though not actual warfare) and no one played video games” (5). This shows that there is not reason to believe that video games alone areteaching children to be violent. Video games are neither good nor bad by themselves. Video games cannot teach a child to behave violently or correctly without any outsider help. Kids are usually the evidence of what they learn at their home.
Kids whose homes have a healthy environment without violence will not learn to be violent from just playing a video game. A few days ago, I asked my roommate’smother if she thought video games teach children to be violent. She answered, “It depends if the parents teach the child what is right and wrong. If the child learns to be violent, then it is the parent's fault because they did not pay close attention to their child” Then, she gave this example “if someone gives a child a gun, this child will not become a killer immediately. If this person tellsthis child that using the gun is wrong, then he will grow up knowing that he does not have to use the gun. On the other side, if you give him an example of how to use the gun without warning that the use of this is bad, he most probably will kill somebody in the future” This means that the bad influence that video games can cause to children depends all in the amount of care the parents have....