Are Video Games Doing More Harm Than Good

Video games are one of the most popular sources of entertainment in today’s world, there are many different types of games made for people of different ages. As technology gets more advanced, these games get better and more interesting. Some people believe that video is bad, it is harmful, but it is, in fact, the opposite, video games do more good than harm. Some think that video games cause violence but it does not, video games have helped some people by creating more job opportunities and it is one of the best cures for boredom.

One of the main concerns about video games that some people have is that they believe video games are one of the causes of violence. However, that is not true, video games do not cause violence. There was a study that Frontiers in Psychology published, where researchers gathered a group of gamers and non-gamers and showed them some psychological images that were “designed to provoke an emotional and empathetic response”, and each person will be asked how they would feel in those scenarios, while the researchers measured the activation of specific brain regions using an MRI machine and compare the neural response of between gamers and non-gamers. The result of the questionnaire showed that there are no differences in measures of aggression and empathy between gamers and non-gamers and the MRI results backed this up by demonstrating that both gamers and non-gamers had similar neural responses to the emotionally provocative images.

Video games have been around a long time, but the number of video games, including both violent and non-violent, that were released and sold started to take off during the mid-90s, exploded during the 2000s, hit its peak and then slowly started to decrease in the mid-2010s as mobile games began rising in popularity. Meanwhile, starting from 1991-2016, which was basically when video games were slowly gaining in popularity, major violent crimes like murder have gone down by 45.5%, rape has gone down by 30%, robbery has gone down by 62.3% and assault has gone down by 42.7%. Similarly, the number of crimes committed by youth has shown a decline in the same period of time. Comparing these 2 statistics, we can clearly see that they are opposite to each other. What do these statistics tell us? These data have shown us that video games are not the ones at fault for causing violence, people blamed video games because they did not want to admit that they are the ones at fault.

Video games have opened up more future pathways that people can take. Because of how popular video games have become, jobs that did not exist before like professional e-sport players, video game content creators, graphic designers, video game artists/animators, game designers, programmers, and game testers now exist, they are respected and admired by many people in the gaming community. At first, people did not think that these jobs could actually work out, they think that those who play games for their job do not earn much and are useless. Unlike most jobs out there today, these jobs are unlikely to be replaced by automation, which is great as it is a secure job with high pay if you do well. A famous league of legends e-sport player, called Faker, earned more than 1 million dollars just from his programming career, he has a net worth of around $ 4 million and his annual salary is $2.5 million with $1.2 million of prize money from his e-sport games. He had won many awards and honors and was one of the only two players to have ever won the League of Legends World Championship three times, along with the All-Star Paris 2014, Mid-Season Invitational tournament in 2016, Mid-Season Invitational tournament in 2017, and IEM World Championship 2016. Video games have helped create more job opportunities that are secure as it is not likely automation will take over those positions, and it can lead to a successful path.

Not all video games are the same, some are educational ones that are made for children, some are simple yet addicting, some are designed to rely on your strategic, critical thinking, and imaginative abilities, and the list goes on and on. Even though there are so many different types, they all serve one purpose, to entertain the player. Video games had also connected many people together. Through video games, I have got to know a lot of people, some of whom became my best friends, someone I trust and rely on a lot. When we hang out together, playing video games has always been one of our favorite things to do to pass time, hanging out with them always makes me happy and relieves my stress. It does not matter that we like different types of games, there are so many different games out there that we always manage to find one that we both enjoy playing. I’m grateful for the existence of video games, without them I wouldn’t have met so many wonderful people it.

In conclusion, video games are not as bad as people see, they have helped many people instead. Video games are not the ones at fault for causing violence, it has helped create more job opportunities for many people and it is one of the best entertainment. Video games are often portrayed as bad in media and in certain people’s eyes, they only focus on the bad things that they think video games caused without much proof and ignored the fact that it had helped many people in today’s society. We should instead look at both sides of the picture with facts and not blindly believe in what we think it’s right.