know that in Canada studies have shown that there has been a 204% increase in a certain market from 1994 to 2014. Can you guess what market it is? Video games! Hello fellow classmates today I’ll be talking about video games as voices of creation and destruction. Although I will be focusing on the destructive viewpoint of video games I will be shedding some light on the creation side as well. The destructive nature of video games is perhaps best illustrated by looking at gamers who play Call of Duty.
This game causes the gamer’s brain to hyper-focus on all the information it has acquired about the game and disregard everything which isn’t about the game in an effort to improve game play. Moreover, according to a study conducted by 2 behavioural psychologists at Stanford University it has been shown that this game specifically has caused the gamer to become more violent which has led to aggressive behaviour being exhibited throughout the gamer’s life. Also by staring at the the Computer or T. V screen for endless hours while playing Call of Duty the gamer has effectively strained their eyes due to unrelenting usage.
However, Call of Duty gamers are not left entirely hopeless. Playing this game is known for enhanced hand eye co-ordination and faster reaction speeds. Thus, it is left up to you to decide if these advantages outweigh the disadvantages. For video games I chose an interesting quotation from two journalists that sheds light on both sides of the spectrum. Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby said ” Show me your children’s games and I will show you the next 100 years”. This quote is empowering because it shows how much our future depends on something that is seemingly insignificant.
There is something to be said about using video games to analyze changing trends in behaviour because more than half of the video games that have been created in the past the 2 decades have consisted of violence. Due to this video games such as GTA and Call of Duty will largely be responsible. This will also destroy children’s minds because they will begin to indulge in violence since it will be deemed as the new norm for behaviour. This quote shows why parents should exercise care and caution when deciding which types of video games they allow their children to play.
Now let’s move on to an insightful comparison of video games. Drinking coffee for example contains pros and cons just like playing video games. Coffee is considered a drug and is quite addictive because it contains caffeine, which stimulates the nervous system in your body. Over time, studies have shown that constant coffee consumption can lead to negative side effects such as being unable to relax as well as feeling the urge to consume coffee. This is similar to video games because both are highly addictive and affect the minds of young people.
Drinking coffee and playing video games is also quite similar because they have both grown rapidly in popularity amongst youth. These are just some of the examples as to how one could compare coffee consumption to playing video games, so hopefully after hearing this, you will be able to look at coffee a bit differently. Now | wanted to a share a personal anecdote of mine. As a child, when I entered middle school in grade 6 I had wanted to make a lot of friends except a lot of the kids talked about video games and up until then I wasn’t into video games at all.
Back then the most popular games were Call of Duty and GTA which were quite violent games. Even though I was skeptical at first, I decided that I would still try out these games in an effort to make new friends. After 1 week I had 10-15 new friends all from playing Call of Duty, but I soon began to realize how naive I truly was. I realized that I was doing very poorly in school because gaming everyday caused me to neglect homework and studying, in an effort to focus on video games. I didn’t realize it, but it also made think of very violent scenarios because at school that is all that I would talk about with my friends.
I eventually decided against playing Call of Duty and let go of my so-called friends. Now let’s recap. Yes, video games can be considered as voices of creation however, they are still quite destructive due to the negative effects they can have on people. These negative effects are more common than we think because just recently a 12 year old in the United States killed an intruder that entered his home with his father’s shotgun. The boy later admitted to acquiring these skills from Call of Duty Zombies. Hopefully after this speech you all will be able to recall the positives and negatives before deciding whether or not to play a video game.
