Effects of Video Games

Have you ever chosen to play your new video game over studying for your big upcoming test? That extra ten minutes of study time can go a long way. Research shows that excessive use of violent video games can not only decrease academic performance, but increase aggressive behavior, and desensitizes the player towards intense violence and gore.
One of the many negative effects of excessive use of violent video games is increased aggression. Excessive use of these games could really change how fast you are agitated and how you react in stressful situations. Ed Vitagliano says, [1] “Exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors”. Someone who doesn’t play violent video games may not become as agitated as someone who plays often. Someone who does play these video games may become very agitated in a situation, even if it doesn’t call for such a strong reaction and extreme desensitization may make someone try to copycat a game and cause a lot of harm.
Another negative effect of violent video games is how they decrease academic performance. Stinebrickner says, ”It is a known fact that video games hurt study time”. Although I do play aggressive video games, I unlike others, play only on the weekends. The main reason why I do not play during the week is so that I can have more time to do my homework and study with little distraction. Many of the students who focus primarily on playing video games rather than focusing on school work will likely, at some point, have grades that reflect the lack of study time. If the problem is not resolved, these students will possibly do poorly or even begin to fail their classes. A survey was taken by Stinebrickner where 210 students had to write down what they did, and when they did it every day. They wrote when they ate, had classes, studied, slept, partied, played video games, etc. He discovered that the ones that played video games on their list, had less study time than others. This helps prove that the students didn’t study as much as they could have.
A final negative effect of excessive use of violent video games is desensitization towards extreme violence and gore. Have you ever been disturbed by images and covered your eyes? You, like many others, have probably experienced that and were afraid. If a violent video game player were to see the same image you were afraid of, odds are, they would probably not be afraid. This can be a problem because lack of sensitivity may cause someone to become numb to violent and aggressive behavior. If they view this violence as normal behavior then they may not know how to react or respond in a situation.
In conclusion, violent video games have many negative effects on us such as increased aggression, decreased academic performance, and desensitization towards intense violence and gore. With such negative effects it would make you wonder how someone would react to real-life violence, probably very negatively. The best thing would be if the players of these violent video games would limit the amount of time they played and this way they could still have the best of both worlds.