Video Games are Good
For the most part, video games have a bad reputation linked with violence and obesity in children and teens. Not until recently did people start to see the positive effects of playing video games. Last semester, in one of my college courses, I was in a debate over video games and whether or not that could teach literacy skills to children. Without hesitation, I chose to be on the opposing side, with the belief that video games could not teach literacy skills. Looking back, I wish I knew all that I learned while researching the topic. I came across many articles by James Paul Gee, an advocate for video games, which had a lot of great information promoting the positive effects of playing video games. There are even games and video game systems that are designed specifically for teaching literacy skills, such as VTech Electronic Learning Products. After doing more research, I found that there are certain video games that even prepare soldiers for war or help doctors perform better surgery.
I agree with the information stated in the previous post entitled “Are Video Games Really That Dangerous.” Video games are not to blame for the undesirable behavior in people because there is violence everywhere, in movies, shows, music, etc. People just need to be able to differentiate play from reality. I agree that video games are an outlet for stress, instead of a gateway to committing crime in real life. Playing violent video games doesn’t make someone want to go out and harm others, there’s other things that affect people who steal, kill, and do other illegal acts. Video games are only games and if they were truly the cause of shootings and other undesirable behaviors, there would be many more crimes committed because the majority of children and teens in America play video games regularly.
Tags: Literacy Skills, Video Games, VTech
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
March 29, 2008 at 7:42 pm
These types of studies are highly flawed because they show only associations and not causal links. Otherwise, you could put any kid in a room, play violent video games and they would immediately go out an do a violent act. What’s also missing is that there are a lot of other factors in behavior and the studies don’t norm out for these things.
Otherwise you could take identical twins separated at birth and the one who played violent games would become violent and the other wouldn’t.