UN2001

Research Project – Is Video Game Bad for Young Students?

Junyou Huang

2010/7/23

Internet, as a “double-edged sword”, has the potential for good or evil. In

recent years, it has shown more and more super power. Sometimes it plays a

very positive role: the campus network construction, online studying and

school link project; sometimes it makes scenes of tragedy happen: students

are so addicted to video games, not go to school; students spend days in

internet café in China.

Considering the popularity of video games, an early research had reported that

100% of elementary school and high school students surveyed had ever

played video games (Chambers and Ascione 1987). That was even more than

20 years ago. There is an obvious mark that video games have already got

into the mainstream media, and the rapid internet development has been

attracting more and more players.

Now there is no doubt online video games had a tremendous impact on young

student‟s growing, and the question become how we can treat the impact. Is

video game totally a bad thing, and absolutely harmful to our students; or it can

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have a positive effect on youths, either physical health or psychological. In fact,

not only few people, especially in China, can only think of its negative part

because we have seen or heard about so many case that good student had

gone bad due to video games.

According to the article “„Internet addiction‟ shocking case” on People‟s Daily, a

high school graduate Xiaoyu just finished college entrance exam in July 2006.

After that, he spent almost all the time on playing online games like crazy,

more than 10 hours a day on average, which led to retinal hole (People‟s Daily

2006). Right now, Internet has become an important part of their lives,

especially in summer holiday, and young students are in contact with online

games inevitably.

David Gentile, the Iowa State University psychologist conducted a study about

video game addiction, which said that 8.5 percent of thousands children ages

from 8 to 18 had shown at least 6 of 11 total addiction symptoms (Shute 2009).

Since playing games, many children showed a series of “abnormal behavior”

such as lack of attention, dropped academic performance, love fighting, don‟t

want to associate with others and so on.

However, not only these current students play video games, those graduates

from high schools or colleges are also the main force. “2007 China Online

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Video Games Survey”, which released by a national famous game website

17173 reported that nearly 60% of the players‟ age focused on 20s (17173

News 2007). The mainly players‟ standard of education was high school (35%),

and most player spent 3-6 hours per day on video games (38%).

So many reports from all over the world continue to pass such a message to us:

internet has a pernicious influence on children‟s growing. Video games delay

students in studying, and those players could not get very high culture degree

on average. We all know that situation can be no longer ignored, but are their

individual behaviors the only problems? Definitely no, so is there any problem

with parents and teachers besides students themselves?

On reflection, sometimes we used to put gaming and studying on the opposite

side. In fact, game and study can always be combined together. We can recall

when we were kids and learning to talk and to walk, to associate with people,

to understand the world, none of the knowledge or skills can be learnt without

“playing”. But when we grow up, the games are more and more replaced by

courses. It is only human nature to playing games. Children love games as

well as adults do. We have to admit that playing is always an enjoyment of our

lives.

So we should not simply see video games as “demons”. Even though they do

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have bad effects which cannot be underestimated, we don‟t have to “scared”.

As long as parents and educators can correctly understand and properly guide,

we are able to not only avoid the negative impact, but also make them work for

students‟ development.

Video game is a new channel of moral education in this information age. Swiss

world-famous children development psychologist Jean Piaget stated that

everything is a moral system that includes many different rules. The essence

of every morality is that individuals learn to follow the rules (Piaget 1932).

Every one of the video games have rules, the process of playing games is also

a process of following rules. Players‟ compliance with the rules will extended to

daily life.

Video game is a way to develop young students‟ intelligence. Video games

teach many skills to the developing children such as problem-solving, pattern

recognition, hypothesis testing, estimating skills, mapping, memory, quick

thinking, and reasoned judgments (Sheff, 1994). Many of these skills are

abstract and require high level thinking, which schools do not often teach

children. To a certain extent, some of the best games also have high

intelligence value. For example, some of the schools used “The Sims” as a

geography teaching tool, and produced a good result (Sanford and Madill

2007).

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Video game is a relatively new content in sports. With the development of

society, people are familiar with the concept of digit sports. Electronic sports,

which describes as video games competitions, has also been decided to be

many countries‟ official sports items and has been evaluated for listing as

Olympic sport (Morris 2006). E-sports not only can train player‟s physical

coordination, but also has the function of mental education. It can even serve

as an outlet for a bad mood (Webster 2009).

Currently, the virtual world which created by online games is certainly true to

life, and seems to be unprecedented prosperous. However, its formation is

similar to our real world. When it passes though ages and ages, the virtual

world also needs enlightenment. If not, there will be quite a mess. Once we

understand this truth, it is not hard to come to a conclusion that young student

loves video games, and need healthy video games. They look forward to video

games, to the virtual world. Virtual world itself is wonderful and has nothing

wrong. What might be wrong is our attitude to video games.

So educators should accept the serious responsibility, deeper study and

research need to be done. The basic purpose of educating is to make overall

developments. We cannot just simply say that video game is harmful, what we

need is a positive view of point. It is necessary that parents and teachers can

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play an active role in young students‟ game selection, gaming or game

behavior. If the whole society can treat online games right, handle this hobby

well, online video game is just a tool of entertainment. Everyone plays it and

nobody get hurt.

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Works Cited

Chambers, J. H., and Ascione, F. R. (1987). The effects of prosocial and

aggressive video games in children‟s donating and helping. Journal of Genetic

Psychology, 148, 499-505.

People‟s Daily (2006). “Internet addiction” shocking case. People,

www.people.com.cn.

Shute, N. (2009). Is your kid a video-game addict? Health, U. S. News & World

Report LP.

17173 News (2007). 2007 China online video games suvey. www.17173.com.

Piaget, J. (1932). The Moral Judgment of the Child. London: Kegan Paul,

Trench, Trubner and Co. (Original work published 1932.)

Sheff, D. (1994). Video Games: A Guide for Savvy Parents. New York:

Random House.

Sanford, K., and Madill, L. (2007). Understanding the power of new literacies

through video game play and design. Canadian Journal of Education, Vol. 30,

No. 2, Boys, Literacies, and Schooling, pp. 432-455.

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Morris, C. (2006). Video games push for Olympic recognition.

CNNMoney.com.

Webster, Andrew. (2009). 7 games for a bad mood. Green pixels, IGN

Entertainment, Inc.