Impact of Computer Games on Society: Excess playing time/Social isolation/Separation from reality

            When people play video games too much and neglect going out with friends or talking to real people they develop social isolation where they don’t want to interact with people in the real world, they can also be confused when they have to talk to people seeing them more as characters in a game than real people this can lead to separation from reality blurring the line, for some people, between real life and their virtual ones.

In a study conducted by Vanderbilt University some points about the negative effects of playing video games too much, they tested some different types of video games on children to see what would be more popular and they found that violent games were consistently chosen over any other type from both boys and girls, this implies violent video games, even though they are marketed towards teenagers and adults they still attract a younger audience who might not understand when to stop playing and because of the addictive nature of the violent games they are likely to spent most of their time on games. The study shows that on average children spent 13 -14 hours a week playing games, in addition to going to school this does not leave a lot of time for them to go out with friends and socialize in the real world, they found that “a stronger preference for each of the three types of violent games was associated with lower self-competence scores in one or more developmentally important areas” this implies the more people play games the less they will know about important aspects in life like talking to people or manners.

In contrast a study by the BBC finds that teens don’t usually play games alone instead play them either online or with other people in the room. "Three quarters of teens actually play these games with other people, whether online or in person." This tells us that instead of the idea of gaming alone people mix social interactions and gaming together, however in this study only teens were tested unlike in the other where the age range was more like 8 -12 years old, which seems to indicate that instead of making games less addictive or tamer for younger audiences we should be enforcing a stricter age limit for example a 16+ year old playing Call of Duty will usually be able to know when to stop or to plan their gaming time to fit in their school work and social interactions whereas a 10 year old would probably have trouble knowing when to stop and just play till they are tired. A possible fix for this is having a pop up on the game that says how long they have been playing every few hours reminding people of how long they have been on and possibly the ability to put a time limit on some users who are too young to know when to stop.

Referral links:

-          Study about negative results of excess gaming https://my.vanderbilt.edu/developmentalpsychologyblog/2014/04/effect-of-video-games-on-child-development/

-          Study about positive effects of playing games socially http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7619372.stm