The Negative Effects of Video Game Addiction

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The Negative Effects of Video Game Addiction

Last Updated: Jan 28, 2015 | By Drea Christopher

Overview

Whether your child plays video games on a portable unit, a television or the Internet, excessive gaming can affect his life. Video game addiction can be as problematic as gambling and affects players as young as 8 years old, notes Keith Baker, director of Smith and Jones Addiction Consultants, in an article for Brigham Young University’s NewsNet. Be aware of the effects of a video game addiction to keep your child's hobby in check. He shouldn't be getting anymore than two hours of screen time per day and this includes time playing games, watching television and surfing the Internet, according to HealthyChildren.org.

Preoccupation

A video game addiction can be harmful if your child is unable or unwilling to participate in any interests or extracurricular activities other than gaming. The On-Line Gamers Anonymous website notes that it may be a sign of an addiction if your child is constantly thinking about his next video game session, figuring out ways to get back to the game, abandoning former hobbies that don’t relate to video games or refusing to participate social events with personal interaction because he's spending time discussing video games on the Internet.

Health Problems

If your child spends all of his free time playing video games and skips meals or loses sleep because of excessive game play, a video game addiction can negatively impact his health. Children who spend more than two hours a day in front of a television or video games instead of participating in physical activity may suffer from childhood obesity. In addition, the University of Texas at Dallas notes that the addiction can lead to such medical issues as backaches, headaches, eyestrain (eyes hurt due to looking a screen too long) and carpal tunnel syndrome--pain and numbness that your child may feel in his wrists, hands, shoulders and elbows.

Suffering Relationships

Relationships with friends and family members may suffer if your child is spending more time gaming than he is talking to or going out with loved ones. The On-Line Gamers Anonymous website notes that gaming may be negatively affecting your child's life if he only wants to talk about video games, lies to cover up the amount of time he spends playing, and argues with you over his gaming.

Increased Aggression

Video games that feature violent actions and scenarios may lead addicted players to be desensitized (not affected by) to the violence. Richard Gallagher, director of the NYU Child Study Center’s Parenting Institute, states that players who become engrossed in first-person shooter-style video games, for example, may adopt a detached (removed) view of society or develop aggressive thoughts and actions.

Poor Performance

Long hours playing video games can negatively affect your child's performance in school if he's preoccupied with video games. He can fail to work at his best level because he's exhausted from a late night of video game playing. If your child devotes more than one or two hours a day to television or video games, he may have trouble falling asleep, have problems paying attention and have lower test scores than other children who don’t spend as much time in front of a television or video game console.

10 Dangers Of Video Gaming Addiction

By: Matthew CenzonPublished:January 4, 2012

For many years, parents have often wondered about the negative effects of video games on their children's health. Parents who are unfamiliar with this electronic hobby are likely to believe that playing video games can lead to:

• Loss of vision
• Decreased mental ability
• Aggression due to violent scenes and situations found in many video games

While there is an ongoing debate amongst researchers about the effects of video games on a person's health and well-being, one can attribute video gaming addiction to the following negative effects:

1. Sleep Deprivation

With work and school taking up a major portion of a person's time, many people are likely to give up their precious time for sleep to squeeze in an extra hour or two for more video gaming. Video game addiction and prolonged periods of sleep deprivation(not sleeping) can lead to insomnia (the inability to sleep), and can take a major toll on a person's health.

2. Disregard For Personal Hygiene

When people are engaged in video gaming for a majority of their day, personal hygiene (cleanliness) is one of the first things to be overlooked. With little to no physical interaction with the outside world, video game addicts feel less compelled to take care of their personal grooming. This lack of personal hygiene can lead to acne, dental diseases and other illnesses.

3. Isolation And Seclusion

Excessive video gaming can lead people to isolate or seclude themselves from friends and family. Their disregard for personal hygiene is just the start of their displacement from the real world and being in a social setting. Interaction within the video game is more important to them than interactions with anything or anyone else. Work, school, friends and family are neglected, and the addiction to video games intensifies as people refuse to spend their waking hours doing anything but playing video games.

4. Depression

Though many video game addicts might not realize it at first, depression can slowly seep in as they find themselves becoming enslaved by their addiction. It is only when they stop and think about what has become of their lives do they realize that there is something terribly wrong. Making matters worse, their only means of finding comfort is through the very thing causing their depression.

5. Stress

Stress from video gaming addiction is commonly caused by the following scenarios:

• A person has become so obsessed with video games, their failures and pressure to achieve their goals within the video game cause excessive amounts of stress. What was once an outlet for fun and entertainment transforms into a cause for stress, anger and misery.
• A person comes to the realization that his or her life is out of control because of video games, causing excessive amounts of stress. Unfortunately, the only way these people can cope with this stress is to continue to play video games, which is the source of the problem in the first place.

6. Arthritis And Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Playing video games excessively can lead to physical impairments like:

• Arthritis: Studies have suggested that years of video gaming can lead to issues on a person's thumbs later in life, especially because this area of the body is prone to osteoarthritis.(osteo- bone; arthritis- swelling and stiffness in the joints)
• Carpal tunnel syndrome: Carpal tunnel syndrome is pressure on a nerve in your wrist that allows feeling and movement in certain parts of your hand. This condition is likely to develop in those who perform repetitive motions in their hands and wrists, making video game addicts highly likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome.

7. Unhealthy Eating Habits

When video game addicts are too busy to take a shower or get enough hours of sleep, they're probably not too concerned about healthy eating habits. For most video game addicts, fast food and easy-to-prepare meals like frozen dinners are the meals of choice. Sugary sodas and energy drinks are also popular to keep up with the hours of late night gaming and sleep deprivation. These habits can lead to obesity, diabetes and other serious health conditions.

8. Aggressive Behavior

While many have argued that video games offer an acceptable outlet to release feelings of aggression, they have also shown to do the exact opposite, especially amongst those who have become addicted. The frustration and stress stemming from the addiction is compounded by depression, and may cause an individual to display unusual patterns of aggressive behavior towards anyone who disrupts their video game play.

9. Inactive Lifestyle

Video game addicts who devote every waking hour to their video games are living an inactive lifestyle. Sitting or lying down all day playing video games, combined with sleep deprivation and poor eating habits is a dangerous combination that can lead to stroke (blockage or bursting of blood vessels to the brain) ,heart disease and hypertension (high blood pressure).

10. Denial

Denial and lying to cover up abnormal behavior is one of the first signs that a person's video gaming problem has become a full blown addiction. Video game addicts will often come up with excuses for their change in behavior and their unhealthy lifestyle. As the addiction worsens, they eventually begin lying to themselves, denying they have any problem at all.

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How Playing Violent Video Games May Change the Brain

By Alice Park@aliceparknyDec. 02, 20113 Comments

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Research finds that children who play violent video games or watch violent TV can become violent themselves, but what drives this change? Are they kids simply mimicking what they see on the screen, or could gaming have a more profound effect on their brains, affecting behavior?

To explore that question, Dr. Vincent Matthews and his colleagues at Indiana University, who have long studied media violence, looked at what happened in the brain in 28 students who were randomly assigned to play either a violent, first-person shooter game or a non-violent one every day for a week. None of the participants had much previous gaming experience.

At the start of the study, researchers used functional MRI to scan brain activity in the participants, all young adult men, while they completed lab-based tasks involving either emotional or non-emotional content. The participants were then scanned again while they repeated the same tasks, after a week of playing the video games.

Researchers found that those who played the violent video games showed less activity in areas that involved emotions, attention and inhibition of our impulses (ability to control impulse or behavior). “Behavioral studies have shown an increase in aggressive behavior after violent video games, and what we show is the physiological explanation for what the behavioral studies are showing,” says Matthews. “We’re showing that there are changes in brain function that are likely related to that behavior.” (Meaning- the brain scans show their brains have changed after playing violent video games.)

It’s not clear how long-lasting the changes may be. When Matthews brought the participants back after a week of not playing video games, their brain activity had changed again, changing back to more normal reactions, but their brain functions still weren’t quite the same as before they were exposed to the violent games.

One task the participants completed while being scanned assessed their response to violent versus non-violent words. The participants were presented with violent words such as hit, harm and kill and non-violent words like run, walk and talk, each in different colors. Participants were asked to identify the color of each word, rather than the word itself: normally, there is a delay in identifying the color, since we tend to process the meaning of the word we read first, before noting the color of the letters.

Researchers found that those who played the non-violent video games showed the normal delay, but also showed increases in activity in the emotional parts of the brain when faced with the violent words. The violent-game players, meanwhile, showed similar brain activity in the baseline tests, but after a week of playing violent games, they revealed significantly less activation of their emotional brain centers. (They were a not as emotionally affected by violent words after playing violent video games.)

Another task designed to test participants’ attention and concentration showed declines in the violent-game group after a week of play. The men were presented with a numeral — 1, 2 or 3 — repeated various numbers of times, and were asked to press a button indicating not the numeral itself, but how many times it appeared. The violent-game players showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain that produce attention and concentration.

The brain changes don’t appear to be permanent, but documenting that the brain does change in response to playing a violent game — even just for two hours a day for a week — is a significant advance in understanding how young players may be affected by these games. The brain changes that Matthews’ group saw were similar to those seen in teens with destructive sociopathic disorders (sociopaths- have no feelings towards other people- don’t care about right and wrong.) These video game studies have been used in court cases by parents and others hoping to limit violent game play among young children. “Individuals and parents of children who choose to play games need to be aware that there are changes in brain function and they need to consider that when they decide whether or not to play these games,” says Matthews.

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Negative Potential of Video Games

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By Russell A. Sabella, Ph.D. — GuardingKids.com

Updated on Apr 29, 2010

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What really is the harm in playing video games? So far, we have focused mostly on the effects of playing violent games which I believe can be hurtful when played frequently and over a long period of time. I also believe that highly violent or sexual games such as those that show gruesome and bloody killing can be harmful even in the short term. 1 I am also convinced that the context of violent video games can be harmful. For instance, is the violence unjustified? Are acts of violence rewarded such as in gaining “extra lives,” more power, or better weapons? How are women and children shown? And, what types of graphics are being presented (e.g., blood, gore, mutilation, torture, etc.). As a summary, the National Institute on Media and the Family (see suggests the following potential negative effects of inappropriate video games

• Over-dependence on games could increase social isolation, as they are often played alone.
• Practicing violent acts may contribute more to aggressive behavior than television watching. Studies do find a relationship between violent television watching and behavior
• Women are often shown as weaker characters that are helpless or sexy way.
• Game environments are often based on plots of violence, aggression and gender bias.
• Many games only offer an arena of weapons, killings, kicking, stabbing and shooting.
• Playing violent video games may be related to aggressive behavior. 2
• More often games do not offer action that requires independent thought or creativity.
• Games can confuse reality and fantasy.
• In many violent games, players must become more violent to win. In “1st person” violent video games the player may be more affected because he or she controls the game and experiences the action through the eyes of his or her character.
• Academic achievement may be negatively related to over-all time spent playing video games.

Of course, not all games will adversely affect your child in all the ways listed above. However, some games can have a negative influence in at least one of these ways. These potential problems or risks should serve as a checklist of possibilities to consider. Next, I want to pay special consideration to the issue of violence and desensitization.

Violence and Desensitization

Desensitization is one process that counselors and therapists use to help clients reduce their excessive (and often irrational) fears of things like heights, flying, spiders, snakes, blood, and public speaking. After being “desensitized,” the person no longer reacts to the object of fear and instead can ignore it. This process can be very helpful when the condition is an important and necessary part of someone’s life. For example, desensitization to distressing sights, sounds, and smells of surgery is necessary for medical students to become effective surgeons. Desensitization to battlefield horrors is necessary for troops to be effective in combat. However, desensitization of children and other civilians to violence may be harmful for both individuals and society. One of the ways that we can determine the level of desensitization to a certain activity is to measure someone’s heart rate, perspiration levels, and rate of breathing while they are experiencing that activity. That is, a person’s level of physiological arousal (increase of those rates) to a situation can help us determine how sensitive they are to that situation.