Video Games: Are they really so bad?

In today's world, where technology and especially video games have gone rampant through the lives of children on a daily basis, scientists continue to come out with studies showing that video games are bad for kids, leaving mothers across the world fighting to keep their babies from such horrible influences. However, when you just simply take a step back and look at the benefits of a situation, they often outweigh the negative impacts. Video games help develop a child's motor skills, feature real world situations, and, unlike the opinion from many, enhance social ability.

Scientists and parents will tell you that video games socially isolate your child. I believe we have to look at the current way of socialization. We don't live in a world where kids get home from school, throw down their backpacks and run outside to ride their bikes and play with a hose in the front yard of their friend's house. Everything is technological; kids are starting to use online communication such as texting and Internet chat rooms. The two major video game consoles (Xbox and Play Station), which most video game players in the world use, offer international communication. Now kids that play video games are linked to almost every other user on the globe. We see this in Play Station's online mode and the famous Xbox Live where kids play video games with other kids and they don't even have to be in the same room.

This means that kids make friends through video games whether they’re playing their neighbor down the street or a kid from Singapore. Because of this, current gamers are more social than gamers in the past. A child today can play someone in Fifa, but back then kids played solitary, single-player games with no connection to others. These games included Space Invaders and Mrs. Pacman where kids sat in a corner of a dark room and played without even talking to someone over an earpiece and even if a friend came over, they had to wait for a turn. So while many adults like to say that they lived a more social world when they were kids, I disagree. Kids today are more connected to people and to other countries in the world just by playing video games than adults were in general during their entire childhood.

Also, not every game is Call of Duty. What this means is that when adults see that video games are bad for their children, they immediately think of Battlefield or Call of Duty. They think that every game’s goal is killing people and stealing cars. There are thousands of other games in the market. For example, EA Sports is a leading video game production company that only makes games that relate to real world sports. These games include Madden, Fifa, and MLB the Show. Other companies like this provide video games that do not relate to crime. Video games, such as Call of Duty, are just a small percentage of the video game market. Children choose to get those games and their parents do not stop them. Parents will get their kid a war game and then complain about how it negatively influences them instead of just keeping their kid from the game in the first place.

A video game cannot be considered a major factor in influencing a child to go out and commit crimes. We can't say that by playing a video game, a child will someday go kill someone because he saw it acted out in Grand Theft Auto. People that commit crimes like murder and theft don't do it because it seemed cool in the video game. They don't need a game to do it if they're already crazy enough to do it in the first place. When's the last time you saw someone rob a store or kill someone and say their motive is a video game? Archbishop McCarthy High School student and video game expert, Michael Ema stated that "If a person is willing enough to be violent, then they never really needed a video game to set them off in the first place."

Although most people think differently, I believe that video games like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, and Battlefield might even help kids release their bad thoughts and feelings of violence and channel it through a harmless means such as video games. Instead of pointing up anger or ideas of crime and exploding when they get mad when they're older, they can just go home and virtually shoot people or steal cars. That way it doesn't really hurt anyone and they'll lose their aggressive, violent feelings.
Now it's time for me to explain the positive aspects of video games. I know I've been arguing against common stereotypes the entire article, but here's what helps gamers through video games. Video games develop a child's motor skills; they hone the kid's hand-eye coordination, special skills, mapping, pattern recognition, and concentration. They also help children's emotional development. Video games help kids learn to follow directions, use teamwork, cooperation with others and the game, how to respond to challenges, how to deal with frustration, and how to rethink and explore goals. This means that by playing video games with other kids, they learn from an early age how to play with others competitively yet cooperatively. It also helps them learn how to deal with obstacles such as a nearly impossible level in a game or an opponent who can't be beaten. Lastly, it prepares kids for real life. For example, Madden has a feature where you can be an NFL coach. In order to be successful, you must buy players, make contracts, trade players, hire assistants, manage your team, and find ways to sell tickets. This feature, which is in many other games as well, forces the gamer to use time management, multi tasking, resource management, situational awareness, and inductive reasoning. All of these traits are major aspects of real world life and adulthood.

Overall, "No", video games aren't so bad. In fact they can help you. So basically, video games don't completely spark crime or keep kids from socializing. Video games can actually help kids in development and prepare them for their life in the future. So are video games really so bad? No, they actually could be good for you.