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The Positives and Negatives of Video Games

Many of the things people hear from “reputable” sources, like news broadcasts, about video games are strictly negative. Things like “playing violent video games was the cause of the aggressive and violent behavior” or “video games were the cause of the lack of academic success”. I think that side of the issue gets represented entirely too often with no support for the other side. Video games can be beneficial and there isn’t nearly enough evidence to support the “video games cause violence” issue. Just like anything else, video games have positive and negative aspects that depend on a variety of different things, including frequency of use, state of mind prior to playing games, and parental involvement with younger children.

First I’d like to take a look at some of the negative issues surrounding video games and a study that looked into evidence supporting those claims and evidence contradicting the idea. To begin, we’ll tackle the ever present claim that video games cause aggression. There are many studies that do show a positive correlation between video games and violence. Anderson and Bushman developed the General Aggression Model (GAM) based on other models. Using this model, they performed an analysis of other research at the time and found that there was a positive association between increased levels of aggression and violent video games in both adults and children. Other studies showed that young men are more likely to be affected by violent video games than young women. And, a study by Anderson in 2003 stated that there are short-term and long-term increases in violence and aggressive behavior in children, teens, and young adults, and those effects often followed them into adulthood. But, as with everything, with as many studies positively link these two things, there are just as many that disagree. There are many studies that question the reliability of other studies based on the age groups they study, and that they tend to solely focus on younger participants. Most studies strongly correlating aggression and violent video games also seem to avoid the other factors of the games that reduce aggression and provide benefits to those playing. For example, there are positive social factors when playing with peers and there were prosocial features (naming and creating your own character) that decreased violence. Also, humor was found to decrease aggression as well. Video games that are considered violent or have violence in them are rarely, if ever, solely about the violence. There are many other factors to consider along with the millions of ways people could play the game. Overall, there is no strong evidence supporting the idea that video games increase and encourage violence and aggressive behavior in those that play them. Much more research would need to be done to conclude completely one way or the other.

Second, I’d like to look at the arguments involving addiction to video games. There are many cases of parents or family saying that their child/family member is “addicted to video games” without much basis. There is a tendency for some gamers to play for long periods of time but it’s still unclear whether we can classify that as an addiction or not. Also there is the question of the difference between addiction and just being engaged in video games. Many concerned parents worry that video games would have a negative impact on school work or “outside” life. In a study of elementary school students in Singapore by Skoric, Teo, and Neo (2009), they measured the amount of time the students played games, their addiction tendencies, their engagement tendencies, and their grades in school. It was found that there weren’t significant associations with the amount of time spent playing games and their grades on “three subject test scores”. But, there was a positive association between the amount of time playing games and their scores in English. It was found that students that played more video games had a better command of the English language. All of this research supported a negative association between video game addiction and academic performance. Basically, children that were addicted to video games did face some negative impact on academic performance but children who were simply highly engaged did not develop negative consequences. But, as with the studies in video games and aggression, there were issues with studies about “video game addicts”. Wood states that the criteria that are used to determine if someone is a video game addict may not be entirely valid because many of them refer to aspects of normal engagement with video games. (The criteria being as follows: “conflict, withdrawal symptoms, relapse and reinstatement, and salience while peripheral criteria include cognitive salience, tolerance, and euphoria.”) Because of the confusing and possibly misleading criteria, Wood says there has been a fairly large overestimation of video game addicts. Wood also suggests that many that would be classified as addicts like have other problems or bad time management so the excessive playing is likely a symptom of the issue, rather than the cause. Similar to studies about aggression, there is no standard belief regarding video game addiction. Because this field of study is so new, there is not enough supporting evidence either way.

In contrast to the negative aspects of video gaming, I’d also like to talk about the benefits. There have been many studies trying to determine if there are actual benefits to playing video games. And, unlike the negative effects, there is a consensus on the benefits of gaming. There are benefits to gaming. One of the main benefits are in the cognitive category. People that play games have shown a higher level of visuospatial cognition. “Compared to control participants, those in the shooter video game condition show faster and more accurate attention allocation, higher spatial resolution in visual processing, and enhanced mental rotation abilities.” (Granic, Lobel, and Engels, 2014) And, a recent meta-analysis found that the spatial skills gained by playing shooter video games are similar to those gained in high school and university level courses designed to teach the same things. It was also shown that the spatial skills transfer to things outside of video games, as well. There are also numerous social and emotional benefits to video games. It was found that social games allow people to compete and/or learn to properly work together toward a common goal. Also, social games could help more socially awkward children gain self-esteem. It was also found that games also have the potential to create empathy for situations and people that are generally not thought about. Overall, there are way more proven benefits than I can talk about here.

Overall, I think video games are more beneficial than harmful. And I feel that there are many proven benefits that people don’t consider on a daily basis. From cognitive benefits to social and emotional benefits, these are things we need to research more and try to make use of. Of course, as with everything, there could be negatives. But I don’t think video games should become a scape goat for every concerned parent and researcher. If anything, I feel like the willingness to blame video games for excessive violence or bad behavior is just being scared and unwilling to accept new technology. I hope that in the future, more people dive into this field of study.

Studies I referenced: http://radford.edu/~mzorrilla2/work/videogamecontroversy.pdf

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-a0034857.pdf

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