Video Game Players And Non Video Games

In today’s society video games have a large influence on people. We also might be driven to the point of where we are dependent on them. In fact, being so engulfed in video games could help children become more focused.In fact, parents would probably disagree and say that video games wouldn’t be essential to learning because it would probably be considered a waste of time for children and time-consuming. Parents would also disagree with the content of what is in the game, but there is a great possibility that video games could actually make us smarter. Steven Johnson explains that the games we are used to playing can improve our visual intelligence and that it would be good to learn new strategies through gaming. Video games should be an

Video games are a enormous part in the world today. “More than 150 million people in the United States play video games regularly or for at least three hours per week. The number of sales has increased and in 2016, 24.5 billion games were sold, up from 23.2 billion in 2015.” “This Type of Video Game May Actually Harm Your Brain.” written by Mahita Gajanan is my positive article and “How Video Games Affect the Brain.” written by Hannah Nichols is my negative article. In this essay I am going to talk about video games and their impact on the brain (Nichols).

Video game addiction has become a major problem in our society. Many children and teenagers play an excessive amount of hours of video games a day that they develop countless problems such as violent behavior, hostility and social isolation. These are but few of many examples of problems young teenagers face when they have gotten to the point of addiction. However, video game addiction is proven to be associated with academic achievements and social skills as well. (Chui et al., 2004). Gaming addicts experience huge fluctuations in behavior as stated by Chin & Wen-Bin (2007). These so called fluctuations in behaviors do not manifest on their own however. Many addicts have actually become hooked on gaming simply because

In the past years, critics have concluded stating that because of video games being released, homicide rates have dropped seventy-seven percent amongst juveniles and less than seven in ten million students have a chance of being killed at school (Sternheimer 214). In “Do Video Games Kill?” the author states, “the 2005 review found evidence that playing video games improves spatial skills and reaction times, but not that the games increase aggression” (Sternheimer 217). Many different video games have positive effects such as problem-solving skills, following directions, multitasking, quick thinking, and more. Video games increase problem-solving skills by placing obstacles in the game for the player to overcome. Virtual gaming can also teach the players how to follow directions to progress throughout the game. Players learn to multitask by taking on different objectives at the same time. According to the studies conducted by Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester found that players become more attuned to their surroundings due to the effects of gaming (Hughes “Benefits of Playing Video Games”). By the player becoming attuned to their surroundings, it allows the player to safely release their competitive urges. The American Psychological Association stated that an estimated of 70 percent of gamers play with friends worldwide (APA). While playing with others a player can enhance their communication skills by giving the players common ground to talk about how to complete certain objectives throughout the game. With video games helping with an individual’s cognitive state it can also help individuals who are recovering from physical harm such as a stroke. A stroke is when the brain loses blood flow,

Everyday both adults and children play video games. Some people argue that video games have many negative effects including poor eyesight and inattention. The TED talk by Daphne Bavelier (2012) discusses some of the current research regarding the effect video games have on your brain. Bavelier (2012) talks more specifically about the effects of action video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and similarly formatted games on a person’s vision and attention span. This paper will explore both the TED talk by Bavelier (2012) and other relevant research on the subject.

North America has spiraled into an unhealthy obsession with video games. The value of the video game industry in 2015 was over seventy-one billion dollars in the United States alone, and its worth has only increased. Polls show that 63% of American households have persons who play video games for a minimum of three hours a day. But do exposure to those games affect the brain in a negative way? Video games are shown to be more influential to the brain than television and movies, and research shows that video games shrink essential parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus. This diminution influences cognitive functions, whose effects will carry on into later life.

As technology grows so does the hours we spend using it to find creative new things to do. Video games have quickly become a favorite pass time for children. There is a lot of controversy of whether or not video games should be a significant part of a child’s development. They poses the ability to impact a child’s development positively and negatively. I believe that in moderation video games can help a child develop their executive functions such as attention, problem solving and memory. There are a variety of attentional disorders that affect the way a child develops. By investigating the impacts that video games have on children we could possibly prevent attentional disorder

On the contrary, it may even broadly interfere with one’s efficiency. Common sense dictates that if a person’s mind attends to ever more tasks at the same time, the deterioration of the quality of his work comes as a huge possibility. Consequently, the output of his labor is not as fine as when the work had all his attention. If this happens, the concept of productivity or efficiency becomes moot, given that the essence of excellence in work is compromised. Evidently, media multitasking brandishes a false sense of accomplishment among students, when in fact it even distracts them from their academic pursuits. The costs of media multitasking in terms of one’s cognitive development are, likewise, disconcerting. Besides operating as elements of distraction for young students, studies reveal that media multitasking may not also promote “depth-based” or analytical thinking — that is, the use of “executive functions (such as the ability to prioritize tasks and figure out what information is most valuable), and the capacity to concentrate on complex tasks that require reflection or imagination (Bradley). Instead, media multitasking drives young learners’ cognitive skills to be “far spottier and shallower” than normal (Paul). Yet, on the plus side, chronic multitaskers seem to lean towards being more proficient visual thinkers, owing to their engagement to visual, rather than print media (Bozeday 3) (Brady 5). Director of Children’s Digital Media Center and University of California – Los Angeles Professor of Psychology Patricia Greenfield, for example, reported that two hours of a shooting game could improve performance on several tasks that are practical in the military job of standing guard. In short, playing video games may improve visual-spatial processing and other abilities of the like in the part of

There are also many studies that show how video games increase peripheral perception, processing speed, and memory (Bavelier, Green, Han, Renshaw,  Merzenich, & Gentile, 2011). Also, depending on the type of video game a particular person is playing, it can be used as an effective training scenario(Bavelier, Green, Han, Renshaw,  Merzenich, & Gentile, 2011). The idea here is that video games can be used as a productive tool for people of all ages, professions, and lifestyles, if they are utilized correctly (Bavelier, Green, Han, Renshaw,  Merzenich, & Gentile, 2011). An issue that may come up is trying to find the happy area in the middle of the people who don’t use games at all and the ones that are using them excessively and becoming

This is especially true with shooter video games, such as Halo 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV. A 2012 study took naive gamers that rarely or never played shooter games, and randomly assigned them to play either a shooter game or another type of video game. The gamers playing shooter games showed faster and more accurate attention allocation, high spatial resolution in visual processing, and enhanced mental rotation abilities. A meta-analysis concluded that these spatial skills improvements are comparable to formal (high-school and university-level) courses designed to improve these same skills. This same meta-analysis found that these spatial skills trained can be trained by video games in a relatively short amount of time and last for an extended period of time. Of course, these skills transfer to other spatial tasks outside of game. Preliminary research has also shown that these cognitive advantages manifest in neural processing and efficiency. An fMRI study found that the areas that control attention allocation were less active during a challenging pattern-finding puzzle in gamers than in non-gamers, leading the researchers to believe that shooter game players are more efficient in attention allocation and more effective at filtering out unneeded information. Cognitive neuroscientists have begun to send requests to video game companies asking to develope games designed to test hypotheses and the specific mechanisms that provide different cognitive benefits. In addition to spatial skills, some scholars believe that videogames are important in developing problem-solving skills. This growth is shown between all genres. The game puzzles range from finding the quickest route from A to B, to using memorization and analytical skills to learn complicated action sequences. Also, game developers often provide very little

The theorists note cognitive benefits with using video games. These vary from perceptional and spatial to attention and the increased ability for the subject to filter increasing amounts of information (Gentile, 2011). The cognitive processing can be increased. There is indication that academic outcomes are improved. There is growing direct evidence that intensive use of video games results in significant generalized improvements in cognitive

According to researchers from Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL), certain sorts of video games can prepare the brain to become active and enhance strategic thinking,

The study hoped to find a link between games that involve fast decision-making and multitasking to improvements in memory formation and retention. Matt Richtel in his article, A Multitasking Video Game Makes Older Brains Younger, states that, “brain scientists have discovered that swerving around cars while simultaneously picking out road signs in a video game can improve the short-term memory and long-term focus of older adults”(Richtel). In the study that was conducted, “a group of adults between the ages of 60 and 85 were recruited to play a game called NeuroRacer for 12 hours a month. After playing the game for six months, the older adults were better at multitasking, retained more information in a short period of time, and had stronger attention skills”(Spector). Video games such as NeuroRacer force us to multitask and constantly pay attention to the surroundings in the game. Due to this, our undivided attention is needed in order to succeed. The ability to thoroughly pay attention has been directly linked to improved memory and intelligence. Games like this can improve memory by enhancing our ability to pay attention and learn. In addition, they also help with the amount of information we can store in our short-term memory at one time. So instead of being able to remember four words from a list, we can now remember five or six. As a result, constantly working these types of neural connections is what inevitably leads to better memory and the ability to recall it when we want to. Improvements in memory, such as this are also positively correlated with improvements in problem solving

Although it is widely believed that action games cause increased levels of aggression and addiction if played too long, it is now seen that after long durations of playing action games it increased your cognitive skills. One of the cognitive skills that was improved was information-processing speed. Playing games such as Grand Theft Auto and Burnout, which involve quick streams of events, for extended durations of time lead to improved information-processing speed. In games such as these the player has to think quick on their feet and decide fast. Whether it is deciding where to go, what weapon to

Playing video games is among one of the favorite pastimes of many people around the world. Some play games to kill time with simple tasks found most commonly on the phone, while others play them to challenge their mind in the form of complex puzzles or to practice management skills, some play them to experience a sense of adventure that they just can’t find anywhere else, and many use them as a way to communicate or have fun with friends both near and far. Whatever the reason someone may have for playing video games, they may not think that games can have an effect on their brains. Some would say that playing video games can lead to negative effects such as harming the player’s cognitive skills or causing them to become much more violent than normal. Others would argue that playing video games quickens the minds of their players, leading to higher mental performance or an increased attention to detail. Thanks to this hotly debated controversy many studies have been conducted over the past years in order to settle the debate once and for all. So what effect can playing video games have on the cognitive skills of their players, and are these effects positive, negative, or somewhere in the middle?