Video Games And Teenagers

“I’m back.” A tall and thin boy walks toward his room after greeting his father. He sits in front of his computer and presses the power button just like usual. A line of words appeared on the screen: “Welcome Jack, please enter your password.” Jack doesn’t even need to look at the keyboard to do this since he has done this hundreds of times since he entered high school. His fingers are sweeping on the old keyboard. The sound of typing the keyboard can not be more familiar to Jack but it obviously annoys his father. “Don’t play video games.” his father yells. “Just an hour, then I’ll do my homework.” Jack is trying to explain. “Did you hear me? Shut it down!” his father yells back. Jack makes a wry face and shuts his computer down unwillingly. He takes out his homework and begins to perfunctorily write some numbers on the paper.

This kind of dispute has happened so many times in Jack’s home. And it doesn’t only bother Jack’s family, but also many other families. Simply prohibiting teenagers from playing video games works in most cases, but inappropriate handling methods sometimes may not give the right result which parents want. In Jack’s case, his father thought prohibiting Jack from playing video games can make Jack focus on his homework. But the truth is not what he expected. Making his son angry is not helpful to anyone.

In fact, video game is not an unforgivable enemy which must be wiped out. Just like Nicholas Carr says in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” technology has significantly changed the way people’s brains work. Parents need to understand that playing video games can have some benefits to teenagers’ brains development such as helping them to improve their multitasking skills, enhance their reaction speed and reduce their mental stress.

However, due to the stereotype of video games, some parents may doubt that how could these low-level toys affect brain development. Indeed, in the past, people were only familiar with simple video games such as Pac-Man or Monopoly game. In these old video games, players didn’t have many choices. They just needed to follow the rules and decide either to go forward or backward and their goal was very simple as well: beat the highest score. However today, the world of video games has changed dramatically. In Malcolm Gladwell’s (2005) article “Brain Candy”, he pointed out that today’s video games have become much more complicated than their predecessors. Because of the huge development of computer science, developers are now able to build fantastic three-dimensional virtual worlds in video games and players’ missions have become more complex as well. In most cases, players need to deal with multiple challenges simultaneously, such as taking care of their virtual characters, exploring the virtual world and figuring out how to defeat enemies. Balancing everything well requires the player’s brain to run rapidly and clearly. In this process, teenagers’ brains could get sufficient functional training.

The most obvious change which video games can bring to players is the improvement of their multitasking skill. According to Dario D. Salvucci and Niels A. Taatgen’s book Multitasking Mind (2010), multitasking is a kind of skill that allows a person to work on multiple things simultaneously. This is skill is important in real life because it can significantly improve people’s work efficiency, but just like Nadia Goodman (2013) pointed out, people’s brains are not born for multitasking. Therefore, specific training is necessary and video games are good choices.

For example, the popular FPS (first-person shooter) game “Call Of Duty” can effectively train teenagers’ multitasking skills. In this video game, the player acts like a soldier and takes part in military actions. The player needs to do three things simultaneously: look at the screen to determine what is happening, manage his or her character to shoot with the mouse and manage the character to move with the keyboard. These actions require high hand-eye coordination ability which is a type of multitasking sill. This is also why some non-gamer parents find it’s difficult to play their children’s video games. Without this kind of practice, they can only either shoot or move, not both at the same time. So it’s hard for them to control their left hand and right hand to work together. An NPR’s article(2010) showed the same result: gamers showed better multitasking skill than non-gamers on certain tests.

The test also found that video game players have faster reaction speed. In video games, players usually don’t have long time to decide what to do next. In most cases, players have only seconds to make a decision. Sometimes a wise decision can make the whole game easier while a wrong decision can make everything worse. Therefore, video games require players to make smart choices quickly. Players have to calculate the cost and the profit and choose an option which has the best cost performance in a very short time. According to Alan D. Castel, Jay Pratt and Emily Drummond’s article in Acta Psychologica, recent research has proved that video game players have faster visual reaction. This can be very meaningful to teenagers. Having faster reaction to the surroundings means they can deal with the orders they received faster, understand the knowledge they saw faster and dodge the incoming risk faster.

In addition, video games can also reduce teenagers’ mental stress. Teenagers face several stresses in lives such as peer relationships, school grades and family issues. Video games offer teenagers a good place to express their frustration instead of yelling to their friends or parents in real lives. In “Science Proves that Playing Video Games Reduces Your Stress” the author Ryan Dube (2015) states that science has proved that playing video games is helpful to reduce stress and improve mental health. In virtual worlds, players are able to do some violent things which they are not allowed to do in real lives, such as using guns, fighting or murdering. Although using violence in virtual worlds is safe, some parents may still worry violent video games may make their children aggressive. But in fact, according to Zawn Villines’ research(2015), violent video games will not make teenagers violent or aggressive. Also, parents do not need to worry that their children may contact violent video games too early due to there is video game content rating system which can prevent teenagers from purchasing or playing those video games that don’t suit their ages. In addition, a 2010 study at Texas A&M conducted by Associate Professor Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson showed that people who play violent video games have better abilities to handle stress. So, playing a bit violent video games will not be a problem, and it is beneficial to teenagers.

In conclusion, appropriate limits time for playing video games can be helpful to teenagers’ multitasking skill, reaction speed and mental health. Parents do not need to view video game as a devil or completely remove it from their children’s lives . Parents just need to control their children’s video game time in an acceptable range.

References List

Castel D. Alan D, Pratt Jay, Drummond Emily. (2005).

The effects of action video game experience on the time course of inhibition of return and the efficiency of visual search. Acta Psychologica,119,217-230.

doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2005.02.007

Dube Ryan. (2015). Science Proves that Playing Video Games Reduces Your Stress.

Retrieved from http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/video-game-stress-reduction-need-start-playing-right-now/

Ferguson J. Christopher.(2010). Violent Video Games Help Relieve Stress, Depression, Tamiu Professor. Texas A&M International University. Retrieved from http://www.tamiu.edu/newsinfo/7-08-10/article5.shtml

Gladwell Malcolm. (2005). Brain Candy. The New Yorker. Retrieved from

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/16/brain-candy

NPR (National Public Radio). (2010). Video Games Boost Brain Power,

Multitasking Skills. Retrieved from

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/20/132077565/video-games-boost-brain-power-multitasking-skills

Salvucci D. Dario & Taatgen A. Niels (2010). The Multitasking Mind.

Oxford University Press. Retrieved from

https://books.google.com/books?id=YE-anWg_nNsC&printsec=frontcover&sour ce=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

Villines Zawn. (2015). Violent Video Games Don’t Make Kids Violent, Study Finds.

Retrieved from http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/violent-video-games-dont-make-kids-violent-st udy-finds-0414151

Is Google Making Us Stupid, this is an essay from a book called “50 essays”(5th edition) page 87