Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Pros and Cons of Video Games

My next step of my International Teen Life project is to put more effects of video games on kids. For example the pros and cons of video games. First I was going to do this post in other things related to technology like ipods, cell phones, computers and their effects on kids. But I realize that I didn’t put enough information on the effects of video games on kids so to be more specific on this topic I decided to make my new post on this. Please read the copy and paste paragraph.


“In the last several years the television debate has been extended to video games, many of which involve aggression. Because the popularity of video games is relatively recent, only limited research has been conducted on its effects. However, several articles have recently reported that video games may have negative effects on children's aggression and desensitization to violence. For reactions to these studies and comments on the issue of video games and violence, AOK interviewed Richard Gallagher, Ph.D., Director of the Parenting Institute at the NYU Child Study Center.”

In this page I learned that video games of violence or agression are the most buyed video games by kids. Most of the kids are able to recognize the difference between the real life and fantasy, so they see this games as pointless entertainment. But there are others kids that like the violence, which may make a kid a bad view of other people and in a tomorrow they can be agressive in their thougths, attitudes, and actions. There are some “first-person” shooting games that looks that you were the one shooting so the kid could get use to violence. This kind of games are used in the army and it helps the militaries to get used to harm others and also to aim.

One con of video games is that it influence in the academic side because if a kid plays a lot of video games it takes up time that he can spend doing homework or other things related to school. Also in this page says that a kid becomes addicted to video games because if he wons he is rewarded with something, and if he lose it is easy to start again and continue to work on the mision. A video game can have and advantage in a kid’s coordination and the ability to think fast and study a situation if this kid don’t abuse of the video game. A kid can abuse of a video game by exaggerating in the time he plays it. So the results will come out if a kid plays a video game for a reasonable time.

I think that video games are not bad but I also think that they are not so good. I said that because a video game is not bad if a kid knows how many time is enough for him to play it. A video game is also good if a kid buys games with little violence content. Video games can also be good because they make you think fast and improve your vision if you are not sp close to the television. I said that video games are not so good because if you play them very close to the television it can harm your vision. And sometimes kids get like “addicted” to it so it can take up time that you should use to do school work.

Now that I have completed my research I don’t know were does my path leads because Mr. Hide told us that this was going to be our last step of research. I think that our next step would be to finish thinking in how our documentary would be and start planning or doing it. Maybe Mr. Hide would change his mind on saying that this would be our last post and put us another five-hundred words to do which me and my friends off course won’t like that idea.

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