With the emergence of the internet and flexible communication devices such as smartphones and tablets, video games have become popular among children and even young adults across the world. While many people associate playing video games with laziness and other negative impacts, playing such games actually help in strengthening various cognitive skills such as memory and perception, reasoning, decision-making, spatial reasoning, and attention among others. This essay explores how the potential gain in cognitive skills outweighs the potential hazards of exposing children to the very realistic portrayals of violence found in many video games.
To begin with, video games increase hand-eye coordination, spatial reasoning as well as fine motor skills.
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That is, while playing action video games, children train their brains to develop creative ways to solve problems immediately. Therefore, one must have effective problem-solving skills to be able to find solutions and be a successful player. According to Granic, Lobel, & Rutger (2013), enhanced creativity is one of the important cognitive benefits of video games as they enable children to be more creative in the process of finding suitable solutions to the game problems. Also, video games enable children to have excellent working and flexible memory since they involve rotating tasks or objects mentally. Acquiring effective problem solving skills through video games assist children in their studies and daily …show more content…
Kirsh (2003), posits that violent video games are influence aggressive behavior and aggressive cognition among the players. Anderson and Bushman argue that exposure to violent videos games triggers aggressive behavior among the children with violent reactions being commonly observed especially during their interactions. They argue further that exposure to violent video games increases psychological arousal and aggressive related thoughts, and decreases pro-social behavior (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Other negative effects associated with playing video games include isolation and childhood obesity. For instance, children who spend most of their time playing in-door video games tend to be anti-social and also most of them end up becoming obese because they ignore any outdoor activity that can keep them physically