How Games are Beneficial for Modern Children and Their Development

I’m 31 years old, writing report for games is my job. My initial experience in the video game industry was by neighbors, who were richer than us bringing home an Atari 2600 and playing it. For me, this is the turning point in my life. I also remember going to school, and on an Apple II, playing a game called 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” It is an awesome game, and It may be the most important video game in the decades, principally because it is the first time and the last time parents, teachers and children all agreed that a video game was awesome. As a games guy who turns the love of video games into job, I must say ”Games are awesome for your children'. Right? Because this is how I make my living.

Children are showing more skills than we before. Consider the video game 'World of Warcraft'. When I was playing it, the maximum actions that I was expected to show in a video game was simple hand-eye coordination, a controller and a click button. Today's kids play games in which they're expected to chat in text and voice, operate a character, follow long and short-term objectives, and deal with their parents interrupting them all the time to talk to them. Kids have to have an extraordinary multitasking skill to be able to achieve things today. We never had to have that.

Games also make learning become an interesting for kids. I want to introduce you an educator who is named Ananth Pai. Ananth took over a class at his kids’ school and replaced the standard subjects with a video game based curriculum of his own design, giving them Nintendo DS's and computer games, that taught them math and language.

After 18 weeks later. Mr. Pai’s class went from a below-3rd-grade level in reading and math to a mid-4th-grade level in reading and math. Furthermore, when you talk to the children, they all saying that: learning is fun and interesting. In general, learning with games is a very suitable way for teaching and have higher efficiency.

It's also true that we need to talk about the relationship between kids and violence in games. 'There are no longitudinal studies that show a link between violence and video games,' said Benjamin Burroughs, a professor of the University of Nevada. However, we must also admit that if your child is exposed to violence too early, a violent game will turn them into a more violent child. If they train kids to do other things, they also will train that, and we need to accept that , and we need to start to understand the connection of games as form of training. We cannot generalize that the game does not affect kids. this is not true. Since 1990s, video games have a complete ranking system to protect children getting away the “adult only” games. Overall, games won’t cause violence, and the ranking system of games helps children create a joyful experience to play games.

In conclusion, games give children a good opportunity to learn easily and pleasantly. The world that we live in right now, the world of Sunday afternoons, drinking a cup of tea, reading some old book, is over. But that’s ok, there a lot more things that we can do that are fun and engaging, I hope it is you get a chance to go play with your kids.