Don't Blame The Game!
A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere that a woman and her son appeared in some TV talk show talking about how her son changed after playing a video game called Fortnite. I'm a fan of this game and I did a review about it couple of months ago but that doesn't mean I'm going to be bias on talking about this matter here. I don't normally rant or commented about issues regarding gaming and video game because I always believed that each one of us have choices and preference.
The issues of how video game affect children in many ways, have been a around for ages. Probably ever since the first day video game exist in this world. But most of the time it's not the video game's fault because it's all depends on the player. I'm not saying that playing too much video won't have any negative effects, it does, I mean, too much of anything in this life is bad for you, generally. I personally had those experience of sleepless nights playing video games but I know my own limit.
Video game can be very addictive but that addiction is not like drug or alcohol kind of addiction. It doesn't need any medicine, rehab or counseling to be cure. It's up to the player on how he manage his time and how much he play. It's not like he touch it once and will simply get addicted to it straight away. I think addiction is kind of an exegerated term to be used to define it because you can live without it for a while when you have to do other things in life. I mean there are more things in life than just video game but playing video games in many ways can help with adversaries in your life.
What I said above might sounds like a matured way of addressing the issue and if you feel that way, good, you understand and get the point I was trying to deliver.
I've been playing video game for a very long time, since I was a child, since the first day I discovered it. I was 9 that time. I still remember the first console I play was something called Micro Genius (it was a clone console of Famicon because Famicon was not being sold in our country during that time) but I couldn't recall exactly what was the first game I played. It doesn't changed my personality or my attitude but it does changed the way I think for sure. It doesn't make me become a bad guy and it doesn't destroy my life although at one point I was addicted to gaming but I still grow up becoming a human still. In some ways, playing video games did contribute to some positive things in my life.
Children's personality, character and attitude will change as he grow up, regardless if he play video game or not. What he will become and how he will be in his life will be pretty much influenced by everything around him, not only video game. As parent you cannot expect your child to be the same in his 20s as he was when he was 10 years old. Even without video game he will surely change no matter what.
So, who to blame if you cannot blame the video game? When the person is still very young, 10 years old for instance, the parent has full responsibility towards them. Yes he will go to school and there's teacher but they should not expect to delegate all the responsibility to them. Like it or not, parent is still 100% responsible for their children in every ways when they're still young. So, if you think that video game will have some adverse effect on your child, you can just not allow them to play it at all because the authority is yours and the money is yours. If you buy the video games for them and when you cannot control your child from being addicted to it or you found out that it causes change to your child's personality because you didn't even bother to read the age restriction of the game as well its rating or parental advisory, who to blame? You don't go to national television and complaint and rant about it, you just make a fool of yourself.
Nowadays every game have its own rating and advisory pasted on its cover. If you know about that and understand what it means, you won't have an problem filtering what your child can and cannot play. But if you don't know and you give excuses like you have no knowledge about it all then I guess you're to blame! Living in today's world, a few clicks in the internet will find it easily. Even some video game did include the explainantion somewhere on and in the box but most of us are just to lazy to read it.
At one point of your child's life, there will come a time when they will make their own decision on many things in their life. Your responsibility as a parent still there but at that point you might not be able to stop them from doing things like playing video game in their life. But that's ok, when that time come they're probably already in their 20s or late teen. So you can assume that they might be able to guide themself to know what is right and wrong. But as long as they still buying things using your money, you can still have your 100% authority over them. At least that's what my parent did to me and my siblings when we're growing up.
In this life we all have choices and preferences almost in everything. We cannot solely blame other things when we know that we can choose to do it or not. It's all in ourself, we should ask ourself every question possible before we make the decision unless of course if you're forced to but I don't think anybody would forced their children to play video games, right? If that happened to me, I would've been the happiest kid in the world... LOL!
Anyway, if you feel like video games is bad for your kids then don't buy them any. Although you cannot prevent them 100% from being exposed to it as they grow up in their lives. It's even worse in today's world where surely they will exposed to it easily through many ways. So, it's all up to you. For me personally, I will keep on playing video games for as long as I can, it's one way I can ease myself and unwind to keep my stress level low.
Meanwhile, if you're a fan or a player of PUBG, you can check my review on PUBG Mobile HERE. If you want to know what is this game all about, you can read my review and if you want to know if it's fun to play, watch my first play video below :)
Yeah I had thought that this was an fad that we moved past in the 90s. I remember when I was a kid and they thought that Mortal Kombat was going to turn us all into serial killers.
It is interesting how they always point to video games as a problem, but never the real life violence of war that is often celebrated.
Oh yes I remember that too! Sadly this kind of issue and sentiment is still going on today. Few years ago GTAV was almost banned because some people thought that it will bring a lot of negative effects to the player.
Agree, there are many bad things in life that human does, like wars, that can easily influence kids....
I agree, a game is not to blame. It is solely on the parent to make sure "addiction" does not happen. It's how the child reacts to (in this scenario, games) that's at fault too. It could be food, candy, watching shows on the tablet or TV. Worse thing is when a child is just following what the parent is doing, which is being glued to the phone at all times. People want to believe the fault lies in something else and not them. I too have been gaming since the early days, hogging the TV all day but you don't see me having an addiction haha.
Yup, nowadays the kids can picked up their parent's habit easily. It's not easy to control them especially when there are so much things that can expose them to gaming indirectly without them or their parent realize. Even in tv now there's a dedicated channel for e-sports. But I guess gamers like us have better mental strength back in the days hahaha
Too much emotion into the game is not good health. Game it just for entertainment.
Generally it just for entertainment but for some it helps them in overcome bad things in their life. Gaming helped a lot in distracting me from my depression and alcoholism last time. But yea, too much of anything is never good :)
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I totally agree with this post, if a child personality changes because of a game they play it's not the game fault (and yeah, any game that contains harmful things has the warning.)
Actually these days I have more fear from social media harm than any video game did in my life. I included this post in my Daily Picks.
Something every parent should know: