Video games have detrimental effects on a child’s mental and physical development.
While dopamine addiction reduces motivation and interest in ordinary tasks, the time spent on the console negatively affects motor skills. As a result, students who play video games are more likely to be obese and develop heart problems. Researchers have also found severe negative effects of video games on education, primarily due to the impact of spending extended periods on the console.
Video game players often experience reduced concentration and poor emotional regulation, making school time relatively challenging. The effects these games have on academic writing skills are even more significant in education. While gaming can stimulate a student’s critical thinking and creativity, excessive use of video games plays a negative role in literacy.
Negative Effects of Video Games on Education
Reduced mental acuity
Gaming has a negative relationship with educational performance. Despite the many benefits these activities have on children’s developmental process, their continued use has been linked with harmful changes in mental and physical well-being. The negative effects of video games on students are mainly associated with the reducing mental acuity and associated physical inactivity.
The dopamine addiction from gaming also reduces interest in school activities and memory. As a result, students find video games more exciting and associate schoolwork with negative stimuli.
A connection with reduced performance
Studies have found a negative relationship between video games and educational performance. Students experience a direct impact on the actual educational outcomes. The more time students spend gaming, the lesser their educational objectives. Particularly, the negative video games effects on academic performance are associated with the destructive behaviors learned from the gaming environment.
Video game addicts are more likely to be aggressive with internalization habits, reducing their ability to grasp course concepts. These environments also overstimulate and under-stimulate specific brain areas, affecting tissue development and inhibiting information retention and coordination. While the games constantly stimulate the nucleus accumbens, they limit the use of other brain areas, such as the hippocampus.
A lack of motivation
Besides, the constant activity in the nucleus accumbens reduces the need for dopamine reuptake, creating a continuous flow of this neurotransmitter. As a result, the individual becomes addicted to dopamine as the primary reward from gaming. Their response to small amounts of these substances becomes insignificant, needing more to experience the slightest stimulation. Since t
he nucleus accumbens is responsible for motivation and action, gamers are less likely to be interested in ordinary activities.
Education occurs on different platforms, including social engagement and interaction with peers and educators. Video games promote social isolation and antisocial behavior. Gamers are more likely to develop internalization habits reducing their willingness to interact with their teachers and peers.
As a result, they derive little knowledge and information from social circles. Social and professional relationships in education suffer the most from the effect of video game playing among young learners. This situation limits teachers’ teaching avenues and strategies in the classroom.
Benefits of video games in education
While most academic and professional studies have focused mainly on the adverse effects of video games on students, gaming has some notable benefits on development. Particularly, learners who play video games develop critical thinking and creativity better. The challenges experienced in the simulated environments prepare gamers for real life. Students become more resourceful with outside-the-box problem-solving abilities.
Learners enjoy gainful exposure and research skills. With the help of academic writing service CustomWritings, gamers can practice research work and time-saving paper writing strategies for use in higher learning. Online exposure can link students to experts in various professional and academic fields, helping them gain insights into their preferred careers.
Writing review papers on video games and other online-based platforms can also increase learners’ academic writing skills. Besides, they can move beyond their school curricula with assistance from online writers and academic experts.
Effects of Video Games on Academic Writing Skills
Video games as a distraction
Despite the notable benefits on students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills, studies have linked video games to worse academic writing skills. The detrimental effects of gaming are more noticeable in boys. A study from Denison university on this relationship found that boys who use gaming consoles had worse reading and writing scores than those who don’t.
Researchers argue that this situation mainly results from a lack of interest in school assignments, especially since students may prefer gaming over homework. Thus, excessive gaming, especially after school, could affect a student’s ability to read and write due to reduced practice sessions.
Video games stimulate academic writing skills
Conversely, video games can be used to stimulate academic writing skills. Besides, the detrimental effects of gaming on students’ ability to read and write only emerge when gaming time is viewed as a distraction from more constructive activities like homework. Hence, when video games are used as learning tools in the school environment, they are more beneficial to the learners.
The world is shifting towards digital teaching strategies with tools such as games and simulated environments for practice. Besides, the new generation of students is used to online support and assistance services, availing a beneficial option previously unavailable to traditional learning. With the skills learned through video games, learners can complete essays faster and more accurately than before.
Writing in video games
Students who participate in video games also enjoy exponential opportunities to learn new vocabulary and write when gaming. Besides, writing for and about video games is now more common, as game program designers require more input from real players. You can even study for a community college degree in video game production, which requires experience in a gaming environment to comprehend the simulations and improvement strategies.
Most programmers with video game experience from childhood are better at coding. The historical knowledge and exposure to actual video games help them develop more realistic games than inexperienced or uninformed programmers.
Most students are gamers
In the digital era, avoiding gaming and other online activities is almost impossible. As a result, most students are gamers. Whether you study at a local community college or an international university, you are more likely to spend more time gaming during your schooling years. When played in moderation, video games have multiple benefits for students.
From improved problem-solving skills to better cognitive abilities, games can be beneficial to learners. Some people even become better at multitasking or more detail-oriented. Only excessive gaming is detrimental to your learning outcomes. The distraction from playing too much inhibits your skill development.
Despite some negative influence of video games, however, video games benefit students’ academic writing skills most due to exposure and increased access to new vocabulary and practice opportunities. Learners also benefit from writing while playing or for game developers.
Others write about video games, including essays and reviews about specific games and gaming companies. Students can also derive research topics from popular games and engagements in simulated environments.
