Video games made me burn my house down Essay Example for Free

Video games made me burn my house down Essay It’s finally the Thursday night. You’ve seen the advertisements on television and have been waiting for this night for months. You have heard all of your friends talking about it. Tonight, your favorite video game is being released at midnight. You’re getting fidgety just thinking about it. You started counting down the clock as it ticks its way to midnight. Though the clock just past eight, you can’t stand the anticipation. You get in your car, start the engine, and head to the nearest GameStop. Knowing that you are staying up all night for this great, once in a lifetime event, you make a pit stop at Starbucks to get the highest caffeine on the menu. When you arrive at the store, you see a line of people already snaking outside of the store. The sight of the endless line is daunting, but that cup of coffee you got earlier keeps your spirit high. After you fing a parking space, you move toward the end of the line. While waiting, you make new friends, talking excitedly about the game; things like: rewards, tricks, strategy, and glitches. While talking and having fun, time flies, and it’s almost midnight. This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for, finally within your grasp. Everyone is restless at the door; but something is not right. The door is not opening. With racing thoughts, you notice the crease of those around you. What is happening? Why isn’t the door opening? You’ve been waiting so long for the door to happiness to be opened. After an hour of nothing happening, you get in your car and head home. The next morning, you wake up to the sound of the television. Disappointed that it isn’t the game that you’re supposed to be playing, you move to turn the TV off. Just as you’re about to press the button, the news comes on. The news reporter reports a new law has been passed that video games rated M have been banned for sales. Apparently, statistics have shown that M rated video games leads to violence in teenagers. While we know this is fictional, video games haven’t been banned in real life†¦ yet. In today’s society, video games are overwhelming popular, especially in teenagers. With signs of violence frequent in society, video games are an easy victim to blame for. If we don’t acknowledge fictional facts about video games, they might really be gone forever. Video games don’t cause violence in children, and in fact improve cognitive and social skills. First of all, video games don’t cause violence. It always has been a myth. The idea that video games cause violence has not been supported by any research. ProCon. org quoted Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, co-founders of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, in their book there has always been a â€Å"big fear† that video games are a causation for violence in today’s society. They continue to point out that with millions of children and adults playing these games, the world has not been reduced to chaos and anarchy (n.pag. ). With more and more video games being produced, the number of gamers increases. Still we see no correlation in both subjects. ProCon. org quotes another researcher Henry Jenkins, Ph. D. at University of Southern California, â€Å"According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. † He continues to say that even though America has 90 percent of its boys and 40 percent of its girls playing these video games, the majority of kids who play do not commit anti-social acts. Jenkin also quotes a 2001 U. S. Surgeon General’s report, â€Å"The strongest risk factors for school shooting centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure† (n. pag. ). Even though violence is around every day in our lives, video games should not be the blame of the problem. If anything, video games are helping children. The first benefit of playing video games is that it teaches children work with one another better. There is no ‘I’ in team, which video games will teach to the children. ABC news reported series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, â€Å"Researchers found that participants who had just played a ‘pro-social’ game which require characters to work together are more likely to engage in helpful behavior in real life than those who play ‘neutral’ games like Tetris. † â€Å"Upsides of social games can even extend to the physical world,† also reported by ABC news, â€Å"Players of the popular social game on Facebook met a challenge from its creators and planted 25,000 trees in the game world in 25 days, leading the game’s developer to plant 25,000 trees in real life† (n.pag. ). With games today that all promotes the co-op play, children learn the idea of teamwork is needed to achieve a common objective. Thus, this activity leads to co-op play in the physical world. The second benefit of playing video games is that they teach children cognitively. Hope Gillette quotes Dr. Pamela Rutledge, Director of the Media Psychology Research Center, in her article, â€Å"Video games and your children: Pros and cons,† that video games create a multi-sensory experience for players. She also said that players could often feel as if they were transported to another world, just like when we say, â€Å"I was lost in a good book. † Players’ brains create a simulation of life for the experience, and by making progress through the game; they learn how to get around easier over time (n. pag. ). ABC news also reported a recent study from the Education Development Center and the U. S. Congress-supported Ready To Learn (RTL) Initiative found that a curriculum that involved digital media such as video games could improve early literacy skills when coupled with strong parental and teacher involvement. Interestingly, the study focused on young children, and 4- and 5-year-olds that participated showed increases in letter recognition, sound association with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print. ABC recognizes college students as well saying, â€Å"Students who undergo a 3D virtual simulation at Loyalist College in Ontario reported that the number of successful test scores increased from 56 percent to 95 percent (n. pag. ). The educational benefits of video games are way overlooked by society, but once in plain sight, it’s easy to see. Video games are not as dangerous as society portrays them to be. Not only do video games promote educational growth, they also help an individual to work with others. Correlation shows that as video games become increasingly popular and violence never seems to cease, but correlation does not imply causation. So implying video games cause violence in society is like saying that Pac-Man affected us as kids, and we’re all doomed to be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.