Video Games' Impact on Kids

Scientific and technical progress that has reached a huge level of success by the end of the twenties century, became the reason of inventing such a wonderful thing as computer. Is this thing as much important as we consider? Certainly, invention of computers and other modern technologies served as a crucial moment in development of all spheres of life.

Today the computer is placed in the center of nowadays society, industrial field, scientific research, medicine, business, art and what not. There is no any huge company or even middle class firm that can do without a computer. A present-day is in with the computers the whole day: at work, at home, in the car and even in the plain during the flight. Computers headily become an essential part of people's life, taking much place in their consciousness. The horrible thing is that they do not notice themselves getting addicted to these devices. In spite of this fact, computers provide us with considerable help; they carry out various things that we have to do, for instance, they are in charge of launching the nuclear rockets, money ordering and plenty of others. There is no any sort of insurance from system errors that can lead to the huge loss; but even this does not stop people from using computers. Let us get the reason of computer inventing straight. What is the designation of this device? According to historical facts, the first look of the computer was totally different from a modern one being as large as a room. It goes without saying that it could evaluate simple arithmetical tasks and nothing more. Later on computers got more power and started being applied not only for work but for entertainment, as well. One of the most spread kinds of activities that have a lot of fans among children and adults is video games.

Nowadays computer technologies achieved quite high level of development to provide the programmers with the possibility to elaborate the realistic and qualitative graphic designed games.

The game fans or in other words ‘gamers’ do nothing but play computer games. They differ from other people for having an awfully narrow circle of people to communicate with. They have only two necessary things: food and powerful computer. Those people, especially kids, go mad on games, and they are close to pathology. Taking into consideration the fact that the amount of kids getting interested in playing video games increases every day, this question is in need of being looked into from the side of psychological field. Thus, kids’ society is divided into two classes: the first one consists of normally growing-up children; the second is the one that is comprised of the kids’ community who are video game fans. The bad thing is that the latter group is far larger than the former one. Playing computer games is not useful at all. Those children who play lost sense of life and feeling of human values. They used to live in the real world, but now they are completely absorbed into the game environment. The problem is in its peak and badly needs solving for the following reasons.  The sense of most video games is violence. Gamer is offered to kill beasts, unusual creatures or people. “When playing more violent games, studies describe negative effects from increased aggression, decreased inhibition to violence, and increased blood pressure”,  a former resident of the NYU Child Study Center Kai-Ping Wang says. The scientific survey showed that violence has more powerful influence on girls rather than on boys. That is because girls collide with violence not as often as boys and have less experience of cruel video games. That makes them react stronger than boys.

Long playing the violent video games destructs brain at the cellular level, complicates transmission of nerve impulses and reduces brain activity in general. “After a limited amount of time playing a violent video game, a player can "automatically prime aggressive thoughts" (Bushman & Anderson, 2002, p. 1680). The researchers concluded that players who had prior experience playing violent video games responded with an increased level of aggression when they encountered confrontation” (Bushman & Anderson). According to American researchers, as a result to all this, kids stop adequately feeling the difference between virtual and real violence. Having passed through many computer battles, overcoming all monsters, a child keeps struggling in real life. He/she puts himself/herself above all: parents, adults, friends and considers himself/herself to be the master of the Universe. Such children are in serious problem: they do not even realize that they cannot adapt to a real life.

In order to reduce the negative impact of video games, software development companies created two systems for computer games. These systems divide games according to the level of violence present, the corruption of language, the degree of heroes’ nakedness and drug use. It helps the parents to determine which games their children should play and which not.

Highly qualified doctors suggest parents to get rid of the computer games so that their children spend less time in virtual life. They warn that long time of video game playing can result in getting serious form of epilepsy.

German scientists inform people about the following fact: little children, who observe violence at the screens of their computers even during 10 minutes, in a short period of time get their vital important organism systems destructed.

Kids’ health is the most important thing in life, and if children have any problems, parents are the very people who have nothing but help them. That is why the best way for parents to help their children to overcome video games’ addiction is to go through it together. The only thing parents should remember is that they cannot forbid their children to play video games at all. They have to find the way to be aware of what their children do: what kind of video games they play; how much time they spend at the computer and, most of all, if they have not gotten addicted to the computer games yet.

Sociologists offer some following pieces of advice that can be useful for parents. Firstly, before buying their children a video game, parents should check it. There is a wide range of video games for children in the market and plenty of them can be even useful for broadening children’s outlook.

Secondly, parents should help their children to understand the real consequences of violence and children need to realize the difference between the virtual and real life.

The third and the most important point is that before parents let their children play the game, they should try it themselves. It is a little bit weird, but parents should try playing the video games together with their children. It is very effective way to get along with children and spend more time with them, as well as to get rid of the generation gap. Those parents whose children have not ever tried playing computer games have to do their best not to let their children become a part of virtual life.

Why do children start playing computer games? That happens partly for the fact that video games are extremely interesting, but the most important reason is that children have just nothing else to do. Let us look back on the sixtieth. How did teenagers spend their leisure at that time? Did they know anything about video games? No, they even did not know what was a computer like, but they were happy. They used to do things which are not interesting for today’s children; for instance, they used to read exciting books, spent a lot of time with their friends, went to the theater and movie, were going with their parents somewhere in the forest or in the mountains and dedicated much time for going in for various kinds of sport. As a result, they have far more unforgettable memories than children nowadays have. Perhaps, those things can serve as an alternative to video games. People should care about their children because they are in charge of creating happy future.