Video Game Addiction Essay

Does Computer Gaming Addiction Lead to More Dangerous Consequences Among Children or Adults?

The contemporary world develops extremely fast and becomes more globalized and digital in comparison to previous times. Advanced technologies resulted in the creation of a new lifestyle in society, which has somewhat different features. Within the digital world, people gained an opportunity for self-realization in the online realm, which can be considered an adverse outcome. Video games are one of the most popular and widespread ways for realizing personality and expressing the character.

Realization in the virtual world may stimulate a person to further self-development. In most cases, however, computer gaming leads to addiction and causes harmful effects, and even dangerous consequences on the children and adults’ by influencing their physical and mental health, and relationships with society and close people.

Computer gaming addiction causes violence among adults and children, where the latter social category is exposed to making it more than the first one. Violence can be manifested in various ways, although the most frequently used is attacking, which means demonstrating disrespect in uniquely rude manners to the people around a person. One of the main reasons for both social groups is that computer games consist of harmful content in the form of violence itself. If a person becomes addicted from such type of games, they start to follow the behavior of the game characters, whose primary goals are making physical and moral harm to others, killing them with different weapons, and even being able of conducting the most severe crimes. As the addiction itself takes a long time, it means that youth or adults spend it by playing games. In other words, they obtain a particular habit, which in its turn, reduce their repugnance to being involved in the virtual world of violence.

Consequently, the players overcome the psychological barrier and develop the desire to harm instead of being an upstanding citizen. When it comes to children at a young age, they have much exposure to the violence because of unstable character. It is said that “At school age, teenagers have less experience in life and less knowledge than adults in identifying reality from a simulation, and these young people may be more easily drawn to the borderless web game world or even aberration than are adults” (“Violent Video Games and Young People”). Undoubtedly, children can hardly differentiate the real and virtual worlds, and thus, their ability to take responsibility for their actions becomes very small. It mainly happens in cases when parents do not follow the adequate norms of upbringing their children, do not pay attention to their development, and, moreover, have no interest in them. It also correlates with the situation when teenagers have a particular stress situation, in which they easily fall under the influence of the video games system.

Raising children in disadvantaged families together with a tendency to abuse causes addiction among the children, which may lead to more dangerous consequences. As it was mentioned above, stress can become a trigger for addiction. Those children being raised inadequately, face the problem more frequently in comparison to their opponents. Moreover, the problem is also about the adults who had a difficult childhood. Physical abuse can always serve as a reason for the occurrence of mental problems of children at a young age. When a parent demonstrates some disrespect or ill-treatment to their children and family itself, family members try to either solve or avoid it in a various way. For children, it is likely to choose the second option, what they do in many cases because of inability to defend themselves and stand to be under the psychological pressure. One study revealed a clear example of this issue when analyzing the relationship between the family and the influence of the abuse problem on the child’s behavior. It proved that computer gaming could cause danger to a child’s mental health. When it comes to a boy as a participant of the investigation, “the mental state that he attained while playing assisted his avoidance of the family problems and repression of aggressive and violent feelings toward his father” (Keepers 50). Chiu, Lee, and Huang suggest parents take much part in the lives of their children and make an attempt to decide this problem in the way of developing their worldview and improving skills needed for self-realization. From these researches, one can see the negative consequences of video games (575).

What is more, such a process can also be followed by forming of another issue like isolation among children. Trying to escape reality, they go to the virtual world feeling themselves much better. This tendency is also common for older people, who have been suffered in childhood. As a result of avoiding communication, the building of some relationships with others, and socialization, they develop an addiction to gaming. This influences the lifestyle of children and adults, making them be out of society and spending a lot of time alone with themselves. Such consequences are considered as negative as they have an adverse impact on individual growth, mental and physical development, the realization of personality in a particular, professional sphere. A study of computer gaming addiction among young people reveals the idea of their involvement in this process as the way of emotional compensation for those who had experienced some issues in the childhood (Chiu et al. 272). The scientists make an argument that there is “a close relationship between sensation seeking and drug abuse, smoking, playing video games, sexual activities, high-adventure sports, and crimes” (Chiu et al. 272). To clarify, this relationship finds its realization in various negative and dangerous consequences revealing through the chain of addiction, isolation, demonstration of aggression, violation, conducting the crime and even using alcohol and drugs with the aim of reducing the influence of the childhood background. Thus, personal isolation, inability to proper self-realization in real society, aggressive behavior, the disposition to conducting the crime, the possibility of becoming addicted from certain substances can be identified as the dangerous consequences of the computer gaming addiction.

In conclusion, video games are one of the most popular things to cause addiction, which has an adverse impact on various things in psychological and sociological contexts. Being a subject of virtual reality, a game creates an illusion of a world very similar to the real but comparably useful for the players. Addicted children and adults consider it as an opportunity to live a better life and thus isolate themselves. However, within such a result, computer gaming addiction lead to dangerous consequences as violence, aggression, and crime. These problems prevent the social welfare and growth as well the personal development, and for this reason, should be addressed.

Works Cited

Chiu, Shao-I, et al. “Video Game Addiction in Children and Teenagers in Taiwan.” CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol. 7, no. 5, 2004, pp. 571–581.
Keepers, George A. “Pathological Preoccupation with Video Games.” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 29, no. 1, 1990, pp. 49–50. EurekaMag, doi:10.1097/00004583-199001000-00009.
“Violent Video Games and Young People.” Harvard Mental Health Letter, Harvard Health Publishing, Oct. 2010, www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/violent-video-games-and-young-people.