Since the beginning of mankind, there have been space for kids to play. In past, they could go everywhere without fear of being taken a hostage or being abused. Nowadays, the problem is different. They have not enough places to go and play. Therefore kids focus where is enough place for everyone - The virtual reality.
It is common knowledge that children need to play with each other to socialize and learn basic skills. In the past, children played "hide and seek". Now they play World of Warcraft. Why do children play computer games ? I think that they seek vicarious experience - something that they can't do in their real life. In WoW, they are a hero. In Counter-Strike, they can be special trained policemen and so on. The problem is that children up to the age of 15 are vulnerable to many foreign influences they see in the media (advertisements, video clips etc).
When children spend hours and hours in front of the PC or other gaming console, kids take what that machine offers. In many games there is explicit content such as violence, blood and gore, sex, strong language and so on. Moreover, when the game is engaging kids can try to repeat or "play" the game in real life. BUT most of adolescents are not like that. People arguing about children plaing with imaginary weapons, as a result of video games, do not know that this is a piece of human nature possessed for thousands of years - children are preparing for conflict. The same counts for little pups, which "fight" as a part of game too. In childhood, kids know that these little battles are just game, not reality, so video games help them to reach the "next level" of playing. The problem is, when children with mental disorders play too much of violent games. Those people have misshapen perception of reality and therefore video gaming may lead to disaster. But these are rare cases.
Media inform us about the negative effects of gaming on regular basis. It is not proven that aggression has something to do with video games, but same works for smoking and lung cancer. Through empirical studies it was proven that violent games really affect the ones who play them in means of social behavior - not helping when needed (car crash), torturing animals (burning cats in Russia) and so on (*1).
On the other hand, children can sharpen their reflexes, get rid of stress and also become more creative (*2 ). Children also learn how to use new technologies, which seems to be essential skill for the future. Another advantage of video games is that helps children from non-English speaking countries to learn English. I can see this on my friend's younger brother who did not speak English well a year ago. But he really got into the Dragon Age (singleplayer RPG with loads of dialogues)[*3] and now I can see his English skills have improved significantly !
I personally think that every coin has two sides. We should try to look at gaming "outside of the box" and try to decide if it is worth to let our children to be exposed to games. I think that most of the decisions is on parents - not being aware of ESRB, not to care what child does in free time. I think that it is sick to let children play video games for hours and hours and then be "surprised" that child is not doing well at school and has certain behavoral issues.
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