Why Be So Negative When There’s Plenty of Positives

My brother is fourteen years old now and for most of his summer and even previous years, he spent most of his free time playing video games. He played sports games, action games, and probably games that he technically shouldn’t have been playing. However, he loved to play his xbox live. When my mom refused to pay for another month of it, he found it to be boring. He had no one to play with so instead he started hanging outside all the time. Since all he did was hang out in the street, he got into fights, stole stuff, and even got arrested once. My mom had to quickly think of a way to keep him in the house more.

This brings me to video games. So many people think video games are bad for many reasons, but I personally love video games. People say they make kids anti-social, it makes people lazy, a lot of games contain violence, and a couple of other things in that realm. It seems like all the negatives beat the positives of video games because some parents don’t supervise or control the amount of time a child can play video games. If these things are controlled, the positives would out weight the negatives aspects of video games. Video games are interactive and as a player, you start identifying with some character in the game and that state of mind has a positive effect on the player. You can also begin to develop skills like problem solving, planning, quick decision-making, estimation and analysis of the moves or actions of both you and your opponent.

Aside from those positives, some people will always argue about the violent games, for example Grand Theft Auto. How is that game good for any one? The way I see it is if a player can handle playing a game like that without imitating what’s done in it, in real life, than all it does is built a person’s maturity level. The game is rated M for mature any ways, so younger children shouldn’t be playing it and that supports one of my previous points about parents’ supervision. I love Grand Theft Auto because it seems all so real, but I don’t go imitating it. The game is like a movie; it has a storyline and you can’t wait to pass it so you can see how it ends. It builds suspense and the fact that you are controlling everything makes it all so better.

Some are quick to throw video games under the bus because of its negative aspects, but how about those children who don’t have the ability to go outside and run around and do the things that people say children should be doing instead of playing video games. There are children who have disabilities and video games help them build self confidence and it makes them happy. I saw video games as a way to keep my little brother out of trouble so every time he asked me to play with him, I would so he wouldn’t get bored and leave the house. I know that every kid is different, but there are just so many different games out there and as long as parents control what games their children play and how long they play them for, only positives would come from it.

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/10_Benefits_Of_Video_Games.html

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/positive-effects-of-video-games.html