I can remember playing video games at a very young age. I was about four
or five years old when my parents purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System
(NES). I can’t quite remember how long I used to play per day but I know it escalated
since then. All of my friends used to play video games as well which most
likely attributed to me playing even more. I never really thought about it back
then but about two to three years ago I started thinking: How many hours a day
am I playing? How is this affecting me? I wasn’t just playing one genre of
video game so I thought it couldn’t be all bad. I noticed I was more analytical
and that I could do math in my head pretty well, so were those traits partly
due to playing video games? There have been thousands of studies on the effects
of video games on young children and teenagers but the vast majority of them have
been on violent video games. I want to look at the effects of video games of
different genres on people. Puzzle games, adventure games, role playing games
and online games are all very different from each other so in turn there should
be different consequences from playing them. I have looked at different sources
that say not all affects are adverse. I think it is useful for everyone to look
deeper into the studies behind video games not only to prevent their future
children from exposure but to expose them to the right kind of games; and of
course not to overexpose them.
