Video Games and Their Effect on Learning and Language - Coursework Example

Video Games and Their Effect on Learning and Language Video games nowadays have a huge and loyal audience. Children and teenagers arepart of this community of gamers as well as adults and young people too. For the last fifteen years the popularity of video games was proving its increase from day to day. A lot of new games appear every hour, and each day more and more of them take their place on the gaming market. Championships and contests attract gamers from all around the world. Video games successfully connected with movie and music industry and so the place of video games person caused by video games. The most important factor here is the age of a person. Not only when we talk about video games but no matter what subject we are observing it is obvious that children and teenagers are more opened to any influence, both bad and good than adults and people older than 25 years (Gentile & Gentile, 2008). In childhood a person is more sensitive and receptive because a lot of things in this world seem strange and new for him or her. Taking this into consideration I shall say that the development of language skills has nothing in common with video games. The reasons of this are many but the most important of them are very obvious. First of all most of the games need only one player and even when the game can be adapted for two or more partners it doesn’t really change the fact and the fact is that while playing a game a person is interested only in the game and the outside world does not exist for such a person. We build and maintain our language skills in our intercommunication with other people. Of course reading books and writing skills are important too but live face-to-face speaking is the basis of communication between people. Here we smoothly cross to the problem of “escapism”. Addiction to video games as well as a lot of other problems lies in a need of a person to escape from reality and people do it instead of learning how to deal with real life. For those of you who don’t know escapism is a way in which person tries to substitute the real world in which this person lives with other world which matches him or her more but which is, unfortunately, unreal and exist only in imagination of such a person. So by playing a lot of video games, and in this case it doesn’t even mean what games, person estrange from real world and real liabilities and responsibilities. When such estrangement takes place with time person will with a lot of possibility start to behave in anti-social way and her or his communication skills which are, as we said earlier, the basis of language skills will stay on a low level. And in this area static means regress because our language and communication abilities should advance non-stop. Clearly speaking a person should have activities in which he or she participates alone but this activities must be limited by some time because we live in a world in which it is our duty to communicate and co-work with each other not only for own sake but for the better of all people. If video games are limited by time still it is very obvious that their participation in the development of our language skills is close to zero. It is because most of the games are action games and for the benefit of fun, cool drive and shocking action such concepts as literacy and dialogues are pushed aside. The next question in line is influence of videogames on the cognitive development. Exposure to video games violence has short-term and long-term effects. In laboratory conditions it was revealed that even brief consumption of violent video games (even 15 minutes) tunes player`s mind on aggression (Anderson, Carnagey, Flanagan, Benjamin, Eubanks, & Valentine, 2004). However the long-term effects are more threatening. Since children and adolescents do not have stable world perception and are unable to see the difference between real violence and video violence, players show decrease in normal emphatic response to real violence, which is called desensitization. Instead of learning how to be humane, children grow up indifferent or aggressive towards others. Thus, loss of normal emphatic reaction to violence, blood, death, and aggression is the major negative effect of video games. Adolescents who get too involved in video games and spent more than 5 hours playing violent games are prone to behaving more violently in real life. It happens because a brain of a teenager is still developing and it reacts more impulsively on violent and sexual imagery (Walsh, 2004). Another negative effect on adolescence is stereotyping. It was revealed that video games usually portray women in a stereotypical way showing intended anti-women attitude. That is not right because it stays in the way of learning to be tolerant towards others. It results in distortion of normal perception of women and such negative phenomena as domestic violence or rape. Moreover, video games usually portray representatives of minorities in a perverted way (Dill, Brown, & Collins, 2007). However, some games also have positive effect on children`s and teenager`s development since they improve reaction and speed up decision making. Moreover, some games help people with obesity as they include dancing and moving (Epstein et al., 2007). Now I would like to discuss the effect on the memory caused by video games. The types and kinds of games play more significant role in this question. That is because I myself know a couple of games which demand good memory skills. But of course there are few such games and it is more of an exclusion than a general rule. Overall most popular and widely played games don’t need memory skills at all. It is very necessary for the memory to be trained and video games are not a good exercise and even more than that because for some people who have bad memory playing video games will only make it worse. And it is not only because most of the games are not a good training field but also because video games benumb our reception of outside world and the ability to see clearly and notice details which is similar to the ability of memorizing. The next issue is impact of video games on reaction. The situation here is in some way similar to the question we were speaking about in a previous paragraph. There are a lot of games which involve reaction abilities. Clearly speaking this is one of the most necessary things for a gamer. But that doesn’t mean that video games help to improve our reaction. It depends on which kind of reaction we are talking about. Because the reaction of person on the irritants of the outside world becomes worse if this person is a gamer. Video games demand a lot of attention and most of player’s energy so often there is nothing left for the outside world. There are lot of different stories about gamers who continued to play after their house has been burned or robbed. A lot of the people even without headphones will most possibly not hear you when you talk to them during their time with Playstation or Xbox. So in this case video games are attention eaters like TV which can attract our attention even if something not interesting for us is going on. Now it is necessary to proceed further and next issue which demand our examination is influence of videogames on the emotional stability of a person who spends time playing such games. Emotional intellect is proven to be as important as general intellect and so people who learn how to control their emotions can communicate with others on both verbal and non-verbal levels effectively. Our emotions are our answer to the irritants of the outside world. It is clearly that emotional stability is the guarantee of a person’s normal and healthy existence as an individual. Our emotional stability can be pushed out of its harmony and balance by the influence of different facts and reasons so to maintain a balance we as humans should see clearly what is around us and act accordingly. Video games in a lot of cases provide reasons for our angry and frustrated behaviour. For example a very simple example is when a gamer who can’t proceed to the next level or complete his mission starts to behave roughly, beats his keyboard and mouse, yells on those who around him etc. Many of the videogames are based on violence and become more violent with time. Parents all around the world complain about brutal and aggressive behaviour of their children who play a lot of video games, especially actions and shooters. I don’t state that shooters are bad games but I will say that almost anything is bad if it is used more than needed. And in the situation with videogames children and teenagers very quickly become addictive. I heard about special centers for healing such game addicts because it is clearly a problem nowadays very similar to a problem of gambling. So emotional stability is in danger because playing a lot of violent games during long time will eventually lead to a person’s anti-social behaviour (as I said earlier at the beginning) and in that case person will demonstrate his emotions not taking in consideration what others think and feel because his communication skills are on a low level. To justify such behaviour only one thing can be added. Children who try to substitute their real life and real emotional activity with videogames are most probably unhappy and disappointed with what they see around them. Their frustration with real world could be demonstrated in a lot of ways (reading a lot, watching movies, traveling, sports, listening to the music etc.) but videogames are so popular that they overshadow all of those activities. You most probably will ask why and the answer is there for you. That is because videogames give you an illusion that you are in control, you decide what to do and what no to do, you choose whom to kill and whom not. In reality such a person has school, homework, domestic tasks and responsibilities to parents but on the hand there is much more interesting illusion in which you create and rule your own world which matches your demands and makes your existence more interesting and exciting. This reason is not the only reason of a problem of videogames but also similar to a reasons of drugs and alcohol addiction as well as gambling. Such person prefers sweet illusion instead of a bitter truth. That is wrong because by ignoring and not dealing with outside problems these problems won’t just go away and will eventually crash those who tried to hide from them and in that case person will not be able to confront them because such person decided to run away. But when running can’t be continued there is no longer the power for the struggle and that is when emotional collapse happens. After that it is much harder to help a person than at the beginning. To summarize the study I should state that there are more negative than neutral or positive effects of videogames on the different aspects of a person’s behaviour and emotional stability as well as memory and reaction skills. But most of all videogames keep us away from the advancement of our communication skills and by that our language abilities stop to evolve. It is an interesting fact that most of the gamers are interested in videogames only and ignore other activities. In most cases such people are lazy and anti-social, they don’t read or write and their hobby is secluded in itself. By that seclusion people who are addicted to videogames no longer serve society as a part of social mechanism and become difficult to communicate with. References Anderson, C. A., Carnagey, N. L., Flanagan, M., Benjamin, A. J., Eubanks, J., & Valentine, J. C. Violent video games: Specific effects of violent content on aggressive thoughts and behavior, 2004, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 199-249. Gentile, D. A., & Gentile, J. R. Violent video games as exemplary teachers: A conceptual analysis, 2008, Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Dill, K. E., Brown, B. P., & Collins, M. A. Effects of Media Stereotypes on Sexual Harassment Judgments and Rape Supportive Attitudes: Popular Video Game Characters, Gender, Violence and Power, 2007, Manuscript in Preparation. Epstein, L., Beecher, D., Graf, L., & Roemmich, L. Choice of interactive dance and bicycle games in overweight and non-overweight youth, 2007, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 33(2), 124-131. Walsh, D. Violent and Explicit Video Games: Informing Parents and Protecting Children, 2006, Testimony given before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. Read More