Gamer for over 25 years. No more than any other media you consume makes you dumb. In fact, video games can actually heighten mental acuity, by providing mental challenges, or demanding high hand-eye coordination, or encouraging social interaction to solve problems. Found that while playing video games can result in a tiny hit to school performance, they don’t affect a child’s intelligence. According to some preliminary research, strategy games can increase older adults’ brain functions, and perhaps even protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Mori performed an experiment at Tokyo’s Nihon University designed to measure the effect of video games on human brain activity by examining beta waves, which are produced during Beta states – the states associated with normal waking consciousness. Mori claims his study has revealed that people who spend long periods playing video games have less activity in the brain’s pre-frontal region, which governs emotion and creativity, in contrast to their peers. He claims that the experiment demonstrates the existence of an “adverse effect that video games have on the human brain”. Specifically, Mori asserts that side effects can include loss of concentration, an inability to control temper and problems socializing or associating with others. Game brain refers to these effects and the state of the brain.
His theory has gained some recognition in popular culture, especially among parents who believe that video gaming can have detrimental effects on child development. It has in many instances affected local policy and decision-making regarding the selling of games to minors. Often, when cases of juvenile delinquency and child misbehavior are suspected to be a result of over-exposure to video games, Japanese media will show game brain as a possible explanation. Mori insisted that use of the internet was the cause of the Sasebo slashing.
One of the media’s favorite cliches and a recurrent “urban legend” is that computer games are destroying our children’s intelligence. The assumption, based primarily on techno-phobia and nostalgic dis-interest for novelty (especially computers), has yet to be supported by any empirical research, though there are of course common sense arguments underlying this reasoning.
First, children are getting fat, which we blame on insufficient exercise (this is why so many game consoles have shifted from a more static gamer to a physically mobile and active one). Second, the time spent playing computer games is arguably “stolen” from other activities—reading philosophy, solving complex mathematical problems, and writing poetry—these activities, like playing football, are deemed “superior” to virtual games. Third, the nature of most computer games, at least the popular ones, is believed to promote violence: from “Call of Duty” to “Angry Birds,” the most popular games have an important component of violence and children may be turning into Tarantino characters.
Yet there are counter-arguments to each of those points. For instance, an unhealthy diet is in fact much more detrimental than lack of physical activity (and in the past 50 years diets have deteriorated much more than physical activity levels declined). Then, there is the issue of what children find interesting: Do you really think kids would be spending time on Wikipedia or Google Scholar if computer games didn’t exist? That is like thinking that in the absence of easy temptations (be it food, women, or men), people would “be good” and control themselves. Finally, virtual violence is just a reflection of real-life violence and the games are designed to appeal to children—true, there is “violence inflation” as kids want more and more intense sensations and they habituate to violence levels; but let’s not forget that games enable kids to “act out” violence and do catharsis (without actually hitting or injuring other “real” people). Besides, it is more dangerous to do most sports.
To be clear; I’m not attempting to promote computer games here, but their drawbacks have probably been exaggerated, and few have spoken about their advantages. First, computer games have made kids techno-savy in a way adults are not, and they appeal to their vivid imaginations with a fantastic alternative to reality (enabling them to “escape” their boring life routines). Second, computer games require skills, and those skills are clearly transferable to other tasks. In fact, there is evidence that in the past 50 years IQs have been increasing in all industrialised nations, and technology clearly plays a part here as increases are found in computational intelligence (abstract reasoning skills and speed of processing). It is true that we are also becoming more ignorant, but who cares about memorising the capital of Serbia or the names of the human bones when you have internet access 24/7?
(“Minecraft”)
Work Cited
“Minecraft.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft. Accessed 7 March 2022.