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Newsela | Forget what you think you know about video games

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Since the COVID-19 lockdown began, there has been a dramatic shift in who plays video games and why they play them

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Video games can help soldiers relax and reconnect with others.

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Video game makers provide more accessibility features for people with disabilities.

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"Fortnite" attracts players of all ages, but are some too young?

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Newsela | Video games: Can they make people more empathetic in real life?

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Anna Anthropy, the creator of "Dys4ia," believes that empathy games can offer an initial step into understanding marginalized communities. However, the games are not meant to represent their entire experience.

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Experts are divided about the potential harm, but agree on some steps parents can take to protect children.

Blood and gore. Intense violence. Strong sexual content. Use of drugs. These are just a few of the phrases that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) uses to describe the content of several games in the Grand Theft Auto series, one of the most popular video game series among teenagers. The Pew Research Center reported in 2008 that 97% of youths ages 12 to 17 played some type of video game, and that two-thirds of them played action and adventure games that tend to contain violent content. (Other research suggests that boys are more likely to use violent video games, and play them more frequently, than girls.) A separate analysis found that more than half of all video games rated by the ESRB contained violence, including more than 90% of those rated as appropriate for children 10 years or older.

Given how common these games are, it is small wonder that mental health clinicians often find themselves fielding questions from parents who are worried about the impact of violent video games on their children.

The view endorsed by organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) is that exposure to violent media (including video games) can contribute to real-life violent behavior and harm children in other ways. But other researchers have questioned the validity or applicability of much of the research supporting this view. They argue that most youths are not affected by violent video games. What both sides of this debate agree on is that it is possible for parents to take steps that limit the possible negative effects of video games.

Key points

Much of the research on violent video game use relies on measures to assess aggression that don't correlate with real-world violence. Some studies are observational and don't prove cause and effect.

Federal crime statistics suggest that serious violent crimes among youths have decreased since 1996, even as video game sales have soared.

Parents can protect children from potential harm by limiting use of video games and taking other common-sense precautions.

One view

In its most recent policy statement on media violence, which includes discussion of video games as well as television, movies, and music, the AAP cites studies that link exposure to violence in the media with aggression and violent behavior in youths. The AAP policy describes violent video games as one of many influences on behavior, noting that many children's television shows and movies also contain violent scenes. But the authors believe that video games are particularly harmful because they are interactive and encourage role-playing. As such, the authors fear that these games may serve as virtual rehearsals for actual violence.

Both the AAP and AACAP reason that children learn by observing, mimicking, and adopting behaviors - a basic principle of social learning theory. These organizations express concern that exposure to aggressive behavior or violence in video games and other media may, over time, desensitize youths by numbing them emotionally, cause nightmares and sleep problems, impair school performance, and lead to aggressive behavior and bullying.

A 2001 report of the U.S. Surgeon General on the topic of youth violence made a similar judgment. Some meta-analyses of the literature - reviewing psychological research studies and large observational studies - have found an association between violent video games and increased aggressive thinking and behavior in youths. And some casual observers go further, assuming that tragic school shootings prove a link between such games and real-world aggression.

Video game use among American teens

Source: PEW Internet & American Life Project, September 2008.

A more nuanced view

In recent years, however, other researchers have challenged the popular view that violent video games are harmful. Several of them contributed papers to a special issue of the Review of General Psychology, published in June 2010 by the American Psychological Association.

In one paper, Dr. Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M International University, argued that many studies on the issue of media violence rely on measures to assess aggression that don't correlate with real-world violence - and even more important, many are observational approaches that don't prove cause and effect. He also cited data from federal criminal justice agencies showing that serious violent crimes among youths have decreased since 1996, even as video game sales have soared.

Other researchers have challenged the association between violent video game use and school shootings, noting that most of the young perpetrators had personality traits, such as anger, psychosis, and aggression, that were apparent before the shootings and predisposed them to violence. These factors make it more difficult to accept the playing of violent games as an independent risk factor. A comprehensive report of targeted school violence commissioned by the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education concluded that more than half of attackers demonstrated interest in violent media, including books, movies, or video games. However, the report cautioned that no particular behavior, including interest in violence, could be used to produce a "profile" of a likely shooter.

The U.S. Department of Justice has funded research at the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital to better determine what impact video games have on young people. Although it is still in the preliminary stages, this research and several other studies suggest that a subset of youths may become more aggressive after playing violent video games. However, in the vast majority of cases, use of violent video games may be part of normal development, especially in boys - and a legitimate source of fun too. Given the likelihood of individual variability, it may be useful to consider the impact of video games within three broad domains: personality, situation, and motivation.

Personality. Two psychologists, Dr. Patrick Markey of Villanova University and Dr. Charlotte Markey of Rutgers University, have presented evidence that some children may become more aggressive as a result of watching and playing violent video games, but that most are not affected. After reviewing the research, they concluded that the combination of three personality traits might be most likely to make an individual act and think aggressively after playing a violent video game. The three traits they identified were high neuroticism (prone to anger and depression, highly emotional, and easily upset), disagreeableness (cold, indifferent to other people), and low levels of conscientiousness (prone to acting without thinking, failing to deliver on promises, breaking rules).

Situation. Dr. Cheryl Olson, cofounder of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Mental Health and Media, led a study of 1,254 students in public schools (most were ages 12 to 14) in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. The researchers found that certain situations increased exposure to violent video games - such as locating game consoles and computers in children's bedrooms, and allowing older siblings to share games with younger ones. In this study, children who played video games often with older siblings were twice as likely as other children to play mature-rated games (considered suitable for ages 17 and older).

Motivation. In a three-year study, a team led by Dr. Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine, both interviewed and observed the online behavior of 800 youths. The researchers concluded that video game play and other online activities have become so ubiquitous among young people that they have altered how young people socialize and learn.

Although adults tend to view video games as isolating and antisocial, other studies found that most young respondents described the games as fun, exciting, something to counter boredom, and something to do with friends. For many youths, violent content is not the main draw. Boys in particular are motivated to play video games in order to compete and win. Seen in this context, use of violent video games may be similar to the type of rough-housing play that boys engage in as part of normal development. Video games offer one more outlet for the competition for status or to establish a pecking order.

What parents can do

Parents can protect their children from potential harm from video games by following a few commonsense strategies - particularly if they are concerned that their children might be vulnerable to the effects of violent content. These simple precautions may help:

Check the ESRB rating to better understand what type of content a video game has.

Play video games with children to better understand the content, and how children react.

Place video consoles and computers in common areas of the home, rather than in children's bedrooms.

Set limits on the amount of time youths can play these games. The AAP recommends two hours or less of total screen time per day, including television, computers, and video games.

Encourage participation in sports or school activities in which youths can interact with peers in person rather than online.

Video games share much in common with other pursuits that are enjoyable and rewarding, but may become hazardous in certain contexts. Parents can best protect their children by remaining engaged with them and providing limits and guidance as necessary.

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Children and Video Games: Playing with Violence (Facts for Families, updated Aug. 2006).

American Academy of Pediatrics. "Policy Statement - Media Violence," Pediatrics (Nov. 2009): Vol. 124, No. 5, pp. 1495-503.

Anderson CA, et al. "Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries: A Meta-Analytic Review," Psychological Bulletin (March 2010): Vol. 136, No. 2, pp. 151-73.

Ferguson CJ. "Blazing Angels or Resident Evil? Can Violent Video Games Be a Force for Good?" Review of General Psychology (June 2010): Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 68-81.

Ito M, et al. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2008).

Lenhart A, et al. Teens, Video Games, and Civics (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2008).

Markey PM, et al. "Vulnerability to Violent Video Games: A Review and Integration of Personality Research," Review of General Psychology (June 2010): Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 82-91.

Olson CK. "Children's Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development," Review of General Psychology (June 2010): Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 180-87.

Olson CK, et al. "Factors Correlated with Violent Video Game Use by Adolescent Boys and Girls," Journal of Adolescent Health (July 2007): Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 77-83.

For more references, please see /mentalextra.

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Violent Video Games and Young People - Harvard Health Publishing - Harvard Health

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Parents, educators, and mental health professionals share concern about the potential effects of violent video games on children. Researchers are divided on the issue, but agree that parental oversight is key.

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Video games can be a great recreational hobby. However, video game addiction can lead to several issues. The negative effects of video games include effects on our mind, body relationships, job performance, and more.
It is important to remember that video games are not inherently evil. Most of the negative effects of video games arise from excessive use and addiction. Here are ten negative effects of video games:

1. Dopamine addiction

2. Reduction in Motivation

3. Alexithymia and emotional suppression

4. Repetitive stress injuries and other health risks

5. Poor mental health

6. Relationship issues

7. Social disconnection

8. Exposure to toxic gaming environments

9. Poor academic or professional performance

10. Escapism and getting stuck in life

Let's explore each of these effects in more detail and look at how we can combat the negative effects of video games.

Learn more about the negative effects of video games by taking the video game addiction quiz below:

Dopamine Addiction

The reward circuitry in your brain is one of the reasons video games are fun. Your brain releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which regulates the feeling of pleasure from video games. When dopamine activity happens in the nucleus accumbens, the pleasure center of your brains, you feel joy.

When you play video games, your brain releases a constant dopamine supply, with occasional random bursts. Over time, your brain gets used to this steady supply of dopamine, and the nucleus accumbens requires even more dopamine release for gaming to feel fun. That prevents you from enjoying anything that is not as stimulating as a video game.

Even if you try to give up gaming, your mind will attract you to other forms of stimulation, such as browsing YouTube or scrolling through social media. Simple activities will seem completely unappealing, and you will not be motivated to do anything that isn't exciting. That is the height of dopamine addiction. If you let your gaming habit get out of control, this is a real possibility.

Negative Effects of Video Games on Motivation

Unlike the nucleus accumbens, we cannot map the triumph circuit onto the brain as easily. It does not localize to one part of the brain - it's just a general pattern of psychology and cognition integral to human beings.

The triumph circuit makes us feel good when we overcome a challenge. In evolutionary biology, there's a strong story about venturing into the unknown, finding something valuable, overcoming some kind of problem, and then bringing it back to society. That has shaped social psychology - we as human beings value people who overcome odds.

Video games have hacked this circuit. They have found a way to deliver all the psychological rewards that we often seek to gain from the real world. What we want from video games is often very similar to what we want from life. We want excitement, adventures, friendships, victories, and status. Games have found a way to serve that to us with little effort on our end. As a result, a person's ability to engage the triumph circuit suffers when they can just engage it with video games.

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Negative Effects of Video Games on Emotions

When we experience fear, worry, shame, or other negative emotions, the amygdala becomes active. The amygdala is the part of that brain that governs these negative emotions. It is also integral to our learning circuitry since it creates connections to the hippocampus, the center for learning in our brain.

However, fMRI studies have shown that if we start to play video games when our amygdala is active, it calms down. The effects of this are two-fold:

Constant suppression of negative emotions can lead to a condition called alexithymia. If a person is alexithymic, then that means that they have trouble determining their internal emotional state. Alexithymic people find it hard to pinpoint the emotions that they are feeling. However, that does not mean that those emotions do not affect their behavior.

The amygdala is a core part of our learning circuitry. Painful experiences get imprinted onto our memory, and we learn from them. However, people find it hard to quit playing video games because their amygdala does not make connections with their hippocampus as smoothly. They don't learn from the painful experiences of not doing well in school or at work. Their learning circuitry gets sabotaged, and it becomes difficult for them to quit gaming.

Negative Health Effects of Video Games

Playing video games is not an unhealthy activity on its own. However, if done for hours on end, it can quickly become detrimental to one's physical health. Here are some health issues that can arise due to video game addiction.

Repetitive Stress Injuries

Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSIs) are relatively common among gamers. Gaming requires strenuous, repetitive motion on the hands and wrists (sometimes for hours on end). These motions can cause inflammation and injury. Here are some RSIs that you can develop from gaming:

Gamer's thumb is a nickname given to a condition called de Quervain's Tenosynovitis. It is a condition in which the tendons that move our thumb become inflamed, which leads to pain and limited movement.

Trigger finger, also known as Stenosing Tenosynovitis, is a condition in which a finger gets stuck in a bent position. It may bend or straighten with a snap, like a trigger being pulled or released, hence the name.

Tennis elbow (Lateral Epicondylitis) is also a potential RSI that you can develop by gaming too much. It is a painful condition in which the tendons in the elbow get overloaded, usually due to repetitive movement of the wrist and arms.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is another RSI that can be caused by gaming too much. Its characteristic symptoms are numbness, tingling, or weakness in the hand. It occurs due to pressure on the median nerve. This nerve runs from your forearm into your hand through a part of your wrist called the carpal tunnel.

Other Physical Health Issues

We all know the feeling of getting lost for hours in a game, often forgetting to eat, or snacking on unhealthy foods. It should not be a surprise then, that obesity and malnutrition are risk factors from gaming too much. There is also some preliminary evidence that excessively playing video games can lead to obesity in teens.

Eyestrain is a pervasive issue among gamers. Staring at a screen for hours on end. The eyes focus much differently on a video screen than any other flat surface, such as a notebook. It is less strenuous to stare at a notebook because the distance is constant, and the eyes know where to focus. However, on a video screen, the focus is continually changing, leading to eye fatigue. It becomes difficult for the eyes to focus on other objects, even after the gaming session is over.

A study done on Australian adolescents found that prolonged periods of sitting at a computer could alter their developing neuromusculoskeletal system. Posture problems are incredibly common among gamers. The body tries to obtain the least energy-demanding position when it finds itself in one spot for prolonged periods. As a result, rounded shoulders, head leaned forward, a curved lower back, and back and neck problems later in life are common among gamers.

Video Games Can Affect the Brain Negatively

Video games do not necessarily lead to mental health problems. However, you can be at high risk for video game addiction if you already suffer from depression, anxiety, or other mental illness. This is due to the way video games affect your brain.

A study that looked at the effect of gaming on mental health found that problematic gaming habits correlated with maladaptive coping strategies, negative emotions, low self-esteem, a preference for solitude, and poor school performance.

While one of the benefits of gaming is an increase in the ability to concentrate, excessive gaming may lead to the opposite. A study done on 3000 children and adolescents from 12 different schools in Singapore found a bidirectional causality in play between video games and attention deficit disorders. While excessive gaming could contribute to a lack of long-term concentration ability, it is also likely that children who already show signs of attention deficit disorders would be more attracted to video games, due to the variety of experiences they can provide.

Relationship Issues

Relationship issues resulting from playing too many video games is a common issue among gamers and their families. When people get too addicted to video games, they start to neglect other parts of their lives. The first parts to go are wholesome and supportive relationships with family, friends, and loved ones.

Relationships need work to maintain. They are like a plant - if you neglect one long enough, it will wither up and die. Relationships need to regular nurturing for them to grow or even maintain. However, when a person spends most of their time playing video games, there is almost no time left in the day to talk to friends and family, let alone pursue romantic relationships.

A healthy amount of gaming with friends and family can lead to stronger bonds. However, excessive gaming often results in isolation. Therefore, it is much more important to keep an eye on your relationships and see if they are moving down a path that you do not desire.

Social Disconnection

Social disconnection is a real problem in the gaming community. Out of all the negative effects of video games, this one is touted a lot. Though we play multiplayer games, we rarely end up connecting with the people in our games. Some communities are more conducive to authentic human interaction than others. However, those are the exception. Isolation can be extremely detrimental to your mental health. Evolution did not design human beings to be solitary creatures. We thrive in groups where can we can support each other.

An Iranian study done on second-grade students in 2009 found that individuals who were addicted to video games tended to have lower social skills than those who were not. Social interaction is a skill, and if you spend most of your time alone in your room, playing games, and not interacting with other people in real life, then that skill will deteriorate. That can lead to social anxiety, which makes the problem worse.

Toxic Environments

In our society, men are culturally only allowed to express one negative emotion: anger. If they express other negative emotions, such as shame or fear, they are seen as weak or overly sensitive. That makes men more susceptible to developing alexithymia, especially if they are addicted to video games.

Statistics on the gender breakdown on the internet say that it consists of about 54% males and 46% females, as of 2019. However, some spaces such as Twitch are male-dominated. That is a lot of people in the gaming community who might feel that anger is the only acceptable emotion they can express. Hence, it is no surprise that these communities are so toxic.

Some gaming communities are more toxic than others. A potential reason for that could be that some games are more competitive than others, and competition sometimes does not bring out the best in us.

Negative Effect of Video Games on Academic Performance

If you are addicted to gaming, then your academic and professional success is likely to suffer. People who play games excessively find it challenging to pay attention to their jobs or school. It is quite common to turn to video games when your performance in these areas suffers. Games turn into an escape when the responsibilities in your life feel overwhelming.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal study of adolescents in secondary school showed a negative association of screen time with school achievement one year later, independent of their physical activity, age, gender, and socio-economic status. It suggests a link between increased gaming and poor academic performance.

You can have a healthy gaming habit and still maintain excellent performance at school or work. But due to the way games affect your brain, it is much easier to lose yourself in the virtual world then to try to tackle hardships in the real world. For example, many children and teenagers start gaming because they find a community that does not judge them for their socio-economic background or physical appearance. They get attached to this community and start to become disinterested in their performance in school, which leads to their grades taking a hit.

Escapism and Being Stuck in Life

We know that video games provide a safe space for people to escape to when they do not feel equipped to deal with the problems in their life. However, sometimes this can become problematic. If video games prevent you from finding ways to deal with your issues, then that is an issue.

If you spend 10 hours a day playing video games, then there is a chance that you are not facing the problems in your life head-on. While it can be quite painful to do so, it is also one of the best ways to move forward. You don't have to quit video games. You can maintain a healthy balance by taking one step at a time to take back control of your life.

Conclusion

As you might have noticed, most of the negative effects of video games arise from excessive use. Even the health issues mentioned only become a problem when a person spends hours in one place playing video games.

While it may seem like video games can create a lot of problems, there are plenty of gamers that lead successful lives and still play video games. Moderate doses of gaming make all the difference between playing games for enjoyment and gaming controlling your life. If you can address the underlying issues that make you want to play video games for 10+ hours a day, you can take back control of your life.

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If you feel that your gaming habit is affecting your life, we can help. Sign up to work with a Healthy Gamer Coach, trained by Dr. Alok Kanojia himself. Healthy Gamer Coaches are gamers who have taken control of their life, and know exactly what you're going through.

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10 Negative Effects of Video Games | Healthy Gamer

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Video games can be a great recreational hobby. However, video game addiction can lead to several issues. The negative effects of video games include effects on our mind, body relationships, job performance, and more. It is important to remember that video games are not inherently evil.

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They laughed, they cried, they killed monsters.

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