For decades, children have been enthralled by video games. However, with the advent of mobile gaming systems and smartphone applications, this reached new heights. For more info click here.
Gaming has made its way into the home, the apartment, and even the bus stop thanks to mobility. With almost all teenagers in the United States possessing smartphones, it’s difficult to find one who isn’t playing a game.
Despite the negative publicity that video games get, they do have several advantages. The trick is to strike the right balance between high-quality content and reasonable constraints. After all, video games can improve rather than take over your child’s life.
Pros of Video Games: Education Studies have shown that video games can help students learn more effectively. Teachers report higher test scores when video games are used in the classroom. Students may also learn from games and then apply what they’ve learned in a real-life situation. Simulation-style games are used in both medical and military training programmes to teach tools and strategy.
Skills for Life
Delegation, teamwork, and prioritisation are all skills that many video games teach kids. To complete a level, Internet-enabled games that allow kids to play with their real-life friends often require teamwork and task division.
Brain Function Enhancement
Video games have been shown to develop our reasoning and problem-solving abilities. They assist us in making split-second decisions, processing information faster, and multitasking more effectively. In addition, games can help with hand-eye coordination and auditory comprehension.
Parental fears about video games contributing to obesity were once thought to be addressed by motion-controlled games like the Nintendo Wii. However, studies have shown that video games by themselves do not improve children’s average activity levels.
Smartphone games, on the other hand, offer some hope by encouraging children to leave the home. Pokemon Go is one example, but Geocaching and other real-life treasure hunt activities can also appeal to your children. The Walk, for example, combines storytelling and exercise to get users going.
Work Competencies
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) claims that in order to compete in today’s job market, children must play more video games. The FAS said in a 2010 study that games helped students learn higher-order thinking skills such as problem solving, interpretive analysis, and more details click here.
Cons in Video Games: Violence
While any other research seems to come to the opposite conclusion regarding the social consequences of playing violent video games, brain scan findings are worrying.
Simply put, children who play violent video games have lower activation in self-control regions of the brain and higher levels of emotional arousal.
Even as the debate rages on, be mindful of how violent video games affect your children. If you find an issue, trust your instincts.
Assist your children in selecting games that you believe are acceptable. Many video game ratings provide extensive details about the game’s content, including the level of violence, language, and topics, among other things.
Addiction is a disease that affects people.
Following the World Health Organization’s inclusion of “gaming illness” in its International Classification of Disease, England’s National Health Service started treating video game addiction this year.
What is it about video games that makes them so addictive? Dopamine is released into our systems as we play, giving us a sense of joy and instructing our brain to “do it again.”
In reality, video games are created with the intention of being addictive. John Hopson, a games researcher at Microsoft Game Studios and a writer on game design, is also a professor of behavioural and brain sciences.
He clarified how game designers can monitor behaviour by offering simple stimuli and incentives at strategic times and locations in his book “Behavioral Game Design.”
Children with poor impulse control or who struggle to fit in are particularly susceptible to game addiction. This may be due to the fact that video games provide a simple way to fill the gap left when real-life relationships are difficult to establish.
Social Substitution
Keep track of how much time your children spend playing video games and whether it is replacing or harming other aspects of their lives.
Kids who play internet-connected games after school can comfortably “hang out” with their friends without ever leaving the house. This form of virtual get-together, on the other hand, is no substitute for real face-to-face contact.
Digital hangouts deprive kids of the ability to learn social skills and transfer their bodies from one house to another, leaving aside the possible issues of online predators and cyber-bullying.
In video games, what is our role?
Video games may be beneficial to our children’s lives, but we must be present to help them set limits. If you’re concerned that your child is becoming too fixated on video games, it’s time to sit down and talk about it. Make an effort to be sensitive and nonjudgmental. Try to come to an agreement on a fair amount of time for video games in your family’s life.
Enlist the assistance of your paediatrician if you need it. He or she might be able to provide helpful advice and even refer you to a therapist who specialises in tweens and teenagers.
Remember that, while video games have their place, they should take up less time than the time that children need to exercise, socialise, learn, and sleep. We could all use a little more practise unplugging in our increasingly linked world.