Benefits

 

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Kids Playing Video games


Video Games have been and are been judge and linked to children, teenagers and even some adults’ problems. Problems like: violence, game addiction, low grades at school and even some brain and body posture related damages. These problems may not be even linked to video games but some people try to blame the things that they do not understand and in this case is the video games. However, People should understand that everything in excess is bound to cause some problems and even more if it is in a child from 11 to even 4 years old in which the brain is still growing. However, aside from some minor problems or inconveniences, video games have been shown to reward their users with a range of benefits that by far outgrow the unlikely problems related to video games. Video Games have been studied to see if they actually have a good impact in the gamer and according to some studies; video games are truly a source of some great benefits.

 

Most of the studies are related to kids and learning skills benefits but they are also some benefits that are far away from what someone may expect to see.

 

One study made by University of Rochester in New York (May 29, 2003) found suggests that video games are good for the brain. They found that young adults who regularly played video games full of high-speed car chases and blazing gun battles showed better visual skills than those who did not. This was found in the people who already played video games regularly. However, they made a study that shown that people who do not normally play video games but were trained to play them developed enhanced visual perception. They believed that this findings suggest that video games could be used to help visually impaired patients see better or to train soldiers for combat.  They also, concluded that this may help kids be more focus and therefore, learn faster. However, the researchers said more study is needed.

 

Also, an article made By James Paul Gee states that Games are teaching kids to think.  He, states that the fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in the classroom. Also, the phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is for the most part unstudied; more often, games are criticized for being violent or they're just plain ignored. They shouldn't be. Young gamers today aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to learn. Also, good videogames integrate the principle of expertise. They tend to encourage players to achieve total mastery of one level, only to challenge and undo that mastery in the next, forcing kids to adapt and evolve. This has been identified by learning theorists as the best way to achieve expertise in any field. This doesn't happen much in our routine-driven schools, where "good" students are often just good at "doing school" but lack other abilities outside of school. The Video Game industry is always improving and making the game smarter and even though people don’t think that just understand that game companies don't rake in $6.9 billion a year by dumbing down their games. In fact designers respond to the ever growing need for a better game by making harder and more complex games that require mastery of sophisticated worlds and as many as 50 to 100 hours to complete. Schools, meanwhile, respond with more tests, more drills, and more rigidity. Finally, we don't often think about videogames as relevant to education reform, but maybe we should. Game designers don't often think of themselves as learning theorists. Maybe they should. Kids often say it doesn't feel like learning when they're gaming - they're much too focused on playing. If kids were to say that about a science class, our country's education problems would be resolved.

 

In another study made by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in (September 2008) concluded that video games are indeed positive for kids. This was a national study to bust the myth that video games incite violence in kids and/or teenagers. The study revealed that video games are a major component of the kids overall social life. Professor Amanda Lenhart said. "We don't see economic inequalities, we don't see racial differences," she said. "We see are some slight variations by gender and by age, but that's about it." Also, they found out that most games are sociable. The report said that, “65% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them, and 99% of boys and 94% of girls played video games, while 90% of parents said they played video games with their children.” This is a very impressive founding because here people can see that children are indeed gaining from the video games as these result shows.


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