Game Disaster Discussion

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Game disaster
Playing video games is one of the biggest and popular relaxation activity worldwide whereby an estimated nine out of every ten children play them. According to Issues in Informatics Systems, the gaming industry netted a revenue of 34.2 billion dollars in 2012 with the expectation of growing by 5.5 percent by 2017 (Weaver et al. 122). The advancement of computer technology has seen technology transform and expand whereby the playing of video games with tablets, phones, computers and game consoles becoming readily available, thereby accentuating its utilization. In America today, it is difficult to find a home without any video game system, and with it, more individuals find themselves spending on average of two hours per day playing these games. Due to their pervasive influence, numerous scholars and cultures have taken an interest in their effects on education. Video games pose negative controls on education by causing poor educational performance, instituting aggressive and violent behavior that affects learning, diminishing attention, harming the brain and causing isolation.
Playing video games consequence in poor performance. According to Jancee Wright, playing video games has a negative correlation with excellent performance. Due to the engaging nature of these games, people tend to spend considerable time playing them (Wright 40-41). Research by Hilgard, Engelhardt, and Rounder stated that on average, two to five years old children spend twenty-eight minutes each day playing video games (Hilgard, Engelhardt & Rounder 762). Similarly, teenagers spend about two hours while college students utilize fifteen hours to play video games weakly. Spending all this time playing these games leaves nearly thirty percent of their time to other activities, causing them to relegate homework and studying to the least amount of time, consequencing in poor performance. For example, research on the consequence of video games on the GPA of university students documented that in 95 percent of the student respondents, a decline in their overall GPA occurred at an interval of 0.19 to 0.24 (Weaver, Kim, Metzer & Szendrey 126-127). Moreover, spending many hours playing video games affects the students’ sleeping pattern making it difficult to sleep and exhausting them. Subsequently, this makes it impossible for them to perform at an optimum level resulting in low-test scores.
Some video games consist of violence, which imposes aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in children. On estimate, eighty-five percent of all video games consists of a particular form of aggression (Zheng & Zhang 1748). When children particularly boys play the video games with violent content, they become addicted to them and strive to satisfy their need for power and control through them. As a result, they tend to enjoy games that involve hitting, shooting, stabbing and even beating people. In particular, children that become engrossed in first-person shooting games becomes detached from the human condition of empathy; they desensitize them about violence causing them to consider such behavior as acceptable. Moreover, the interactive nature of the games, whereby a player receives rewards for repeatedly utilizing violence against other players becomes engrossed in their beings, becoming a learning tool for such behavior and making them short tempered if they do not get their way as in the games (Groves & Craig 2). Consequently, in school, their lack of empathy, control, and discipline leads to indiscipline cases of them expressing poor habit of arguing with their teachers, physically fighting with other students, bullying fellow students or threatening them.
Playing these games alters one’s attention. Researchers argue that high gaming for increased hours per week results in increased attention problems as compared to those who do not play video games. Video games, for instance, when a child is playing the Marios Bros game, incites active simulation to the storyline of the game due to excitement and engagement (Hertel &Barbara 5-6). As a result, the numerous action, color, and entertainment accentuate the performance of the brain causing increased attention. The increased attention trains the brain to respond efficiently and quickly when there is constant stimulation, in this case, the flickering of lights and exciting images in the games. As a result, when a child goes to school they find it hard to concentrate on the books and teacher’s lectures do not contain popping and stimulating lights and images. Consequently, they have trouble remaining attentive in class, thereby affecting their participation and learning.
Video games harm the brain. Scientific results of many types of research documented in the Journal of Frontiers established that playing video games alt...