The Effects that Video Games have on Children Merlinda Sandoval ECE 405 Children & Families in a Diverse Society Instructor: Richard Gaskill Date: October 27, 2012 When it comes to today’s children many are questioning the effects that video games has on our children who are watching and playing these games. What effects are these videos having on our young children; children are not moving around physically and are they affecting them emotionally as well as mentally?
Some think that video games can be positive, while other may think that they can have bad effects on children. Television and video games are possibly producing a negative effect on their little minds. There are video games that are both educational and non-educational; in the good ones children learn to read, do their math and learn many other concepts, while on the bad video games children are learning to shoot and kill to reach a desired level. In such video games children are interactively involved and are entranced by the actions that take place in each scene.
Young children are very vulnerable to what they see as they play the game which could affect their learning and their development with what is real or not real. Children are susceptible to their environment and their behavior can be easily impacted, therefore it is very important that young children be exposed to games that promote positive and educational learning, not fantasy play such as killing to advance to a higher learning. McMasters states, “There has been an increase in fictional violence in the electronic media. The playing of video games may increase a child’s aggressive behavior because they are constantly playing over and over the violent acts throughout the video game. The method of repetition as they play the game is reinforcing their learning pattern and the children are likely to become addicted to these games as they continue to play it. When children are playing with these video games they are actually identifying themselves to the characters and they tend to role-play when they interact with other children. Let’s look at the pros and cons that children learn from playing video games; as children lay with video games it teaches them to follow instructions, to problem solve by requiring the skills to conquer a task or a level. Children learn to use their eye-hand coordination such as aiming and shooting at an object, they refine their fine-motor by coordinating the movement of their fingers and their spatial skills. The bad effects of video games are mainly blamed on the violence that they contain. Children who play more violent games are more likely to have increased aggressive thoughts, feeling and behaviors.
This could easily lead to a decrease in their pro-social helping skills. Children are being rewarded by gaining access to more methods of being violent in these video games. These games can also alter the thoughts of children because of the characters that are being portrayed in these video games, young men of all ethnic backgrounds are being portrayed as car thief’s, children make a connection between familiar people and show fear of these people, they can have a different view of these characters and make a connection to the real world.
They can also show a sense of fear, superiority over a specific ethnic group or even trigger a sense of prejudging of people in their little lives (York, 2006. ) In conclusion there are many views on the effects that videos games have on children; some can be good educational learning skills while others may have negative effects on the behavior of children.
The most important thing is that if children are going to be exposed to video games is that the videos games should be reviewed before children can play with them. York, Stacey (2006). Roots and Wings: Affirming Culture in Early Childhood Programs (VitalSource Bookshelf), Retrieved from http://online. vitalsource. com McMasters, P. K. (2006, Oct 27). Commentary: Violence and video games: Censors are jumping the gun. The Daily Record. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/390072080? accountid=3252
