Video games are bad: Heres why

One is glued to the video set for hours and tends to eat simultaneously. Children live to have their favorite pizza and cold drink while watching and adults enjoy their fish and chips while doing so. The end result is that they eat too much and add on calories. They put on weight as they usually have fast foods and also do not keep a watch on their calories. Sitting or lying down on the sofa for hours is not healthy. Also it is better to avoid eating while watching video games.
www.instah.com...

Like he says, one is glued to the video set for HOURS. We're talking about thousands upon thousands of hours. Addicted to the fantasy lands. I'm sick of the argument of "oh I turned out awesome", unfortunately not everyone does.

Okay so let's factor in the fact that they are also addictive.

As with any addiction, video game or "gaming" addiction is usually a multi-faceted issue. For starters, video games are designed to be addictive. Not "addictive" in the clinical sense of the word, but game designers are always looking for ways to make their games more interesting and increase the amount of time people will spend playing them. There are Web sites devoted to gaming design where gamers try to answer the question, "What makes a video game addictive?" They want you - once you log in or pick up that controller - to never want to stop playing.

Consequently, games are designed to be just difficult enough to be truly challenging, while allowing players to achieve small accomplishments that compel them to keep playing. In that respect, the design of video games is similar to the design of gambling casinos, which will allow players to have small "wins" that keep them playing. There are several "hooks" that are built into games with the intent of making them "addictive":

www.video-game-addiction.org...

I urge you to read that article. When you combine addiction, which leads to thousands of hours of gameplay, guess what it leads to? Obesity

To add, please explore entire website, it's a good read. They even provide a number to treat video game addiction

reply to post by Hiasyouwant


lolololololololololololololololol
you must have either copied and pasted this crap
or wasted a lot of time typing this crap...


at max, video games are a mild influence, probably of the weakest sort, and or a distraction.
they have nothing to do with how a person chooses to do what, unless the person wants it to, and that is a choice.

insert typical parent needs to watch kids life argument here as well...

soon ill hear from people that skateboarding is bad too lolol

reply to post by Hiasyouwant


Same can be said for television in general, or even books, any form of entertainment that is engaging will take up hours of someone's time. As for eating your favorite foods while playing video games, I don't see how that would happen more than any other time. People love to eat burgers and pizza most of the time, doesn't mean that banning video games would make that desire dissipate.

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
Like he says, one is glued to the video set for HOURS. We're talking about thousands upon thousands of hours. Addicted to the fantasy lands. I'm sick of the argument of "oh I turned out awesome", unfortunately not everyone does.

So let's ban video games because people with weak willpower happen to play them. Overweight people also drink water, how about we ban that next?

Any leisure activity will take up hours of time, and people are bound to snack while doing almost anything. Are you saying books and music and television and film and art is bad as well?

Okay so let's factor in the fact that they are also addictive.

They are not "addictive" anymore than something like books or chocolate or board games can be addictive.

I urge you to read that article. When you combine addiction, which leads to thousands of hours of gameplay, guess what it leads to? Obesity

The vast majority of people who play video games are not overweight, I play them and if anything I'm underweight. Just because there are a couple people who lack self control that happen to play video games, does not mean video games are inherently bad.

reply to post by Nosred


I'm an avid gamer yet I only weight 70Kgs. Where some people get the idea that only overweight people play games, or they become overweight because of it I have no idea.

Personally I'd rather be honing my hand-eye coordination skills playing games than staring at a TV show mindlessly for hours on end.

reply to post by Nosred


Video games ARE addictive. How can one deny that?
And to another guy, yes I'm copy and pasting my info and "quoting", and I'm also providing the source.

See watch, a quote.

Unlike with substance abuse, the biological aspect of video game addiction is uncertain. "Research suggests gambling elevates dopamine," Young says, and gaming is in the same category. But there's more to addiction than brain chemistry. "Even with alcohol, it's not just physical. There's a psychological component to the addiction, knowing 'I can escape or feel good about my life.'"

Another quote, from the same, since you won't read the article anyway.

Bakker agrees. "The person is trying to change the way they feel by taking something outside of themselves. The [coc aine] addict learns, 'I don't like the way I feel, I take a line of coc aine.' For gamers, it's the fantasy world that makes them feel better." The lure of a fantasy world is especially pertinent to online role-playing games. These are games in which a player assumes the role of a fictional character and interacts with other players in a virtual world. As Young puts it, an intelligent child who is unpopular at school can "become dominant in the game." The virtual life becomes more appealing than real life.

Now the source www.webmd.com...

Please explain to me how video games are not addictive, they very much are. You argue a "mild influence". In what other sort of media outlet do you know of, that one spends 10s of thousands of hours intertwined in a fantasy land? None 'cept video games my friend. And I'm tired of the argument "Oh I weigh 110lbs, so you're wrong."

Just because YOU are okay, does not mean little johnny playing these new and ever changing video games from the time he's born, will turn out as perfectly as you. He's at risk to obesity, as well as many social issues this addictive product could cause.

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
reply to post by Nosred

 

Video games ARE addictive. How can one deny that?

Reading books is addictive, let's ban them


lol even better

Eating, shopping, work, being in a group setting, love and relationships, exercising, and sex are addictive. Shall we ban those as well?

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
reply to post by Nosred

 

Just because YOU are okay, does not mean little johnny playing these new and ever changing video games from the time he's born, will turn out as perfectly as you. He's at risk to obesity, as well as many social issues this addictive product could cause.

edit on 22-7-2011 by Hiasyouwant because: (no reason given)

Video games can not cause little Johnny to get obese any more than books can. Just because people without much self control play video games does not mean video games are bad. Obese people also drink water, maybe we should ban that too for being bad?

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
One is glued to the video set for hours and tends to eat simultaneously

. . .

I munch out whatever I am doing.

I eat while I play games (board and video). I eat while I watch TV. I eat while driving. I eat while watching high school football. I eat when I read books. I eat when I am sitting outside lounging.

Funny enough, my kids also eat while doing these things.

So let's ban all those things, yes?

Alternative Realities. Virtual reality. Whatever you call it, that's the central issue. Not games.

Alternative realities are a poor replacement for the real one.

Here's how it works folks, if you don't already know...

The brain produces chemicals to encourage or discourage certain behavior. This has been adopted over many thousands and millions of years as a result of evolutionary change. In other words, it didn't happen yesterday. There's a fair amount of inertia in the system, so what we have today is a echo from long ago.

Technically, Dopamine, Seretonin, and many other neurotransmitter sites in the brain help to regulate the flow of mood and feelings of reward that we go through in our experiences. These are set, quite naturally, to function in a certain manner as is afforded by evolutionary past memory.

So here we're in the 21st century. We got computers, cars, fancy clothes, guns, among other advanced technologies that make life easier. But life was once a very brutal and tense matter. People would gather foods, hunt, build their makeshift homes, protect their tribe from attackers and enemies, and many other things. During the course of their lives they moved a lot, they had to. The dangers were real and life was short. But now wolves and savage tribal enemies have been replaced by gruesome images on TV and scary stories in books and sensational tales on websites and fantastic events in games.

And what about work? Well we used to have to move a lot more than we do now. There were no cars back in those days. Most people walked. They had lots of reasons to walk. There were no machines or programs on chips that ensured everything is managed well. People had to do all that. Sometimes they would migrate during fall to more southern latitudes to avoid the chilling winter season, or conversely head north to avoid the blistering summers. But things have changed in the modern world. Many people have office jobs. They sit for a good portion of the day. Our body evolved to an environment where moving was a requirement so now that we no longer move there're many consequences: bone loss, increased obesity, even mood changes.

And our diet is also different from what it used to be. For example, in the past few thousand years most people lived their lives on grains. Before agriculture was introduced about 10000 years ago and you start finding the Neanderthals you start to see a very meat-heavy diet. In fact, studies suggest almost their entire diet was derived from the animals they hunted. They were even cannibals. In all, most of the food we ate, historically, was natural and at worst cooked over a fire. This is what our dna has evolved to expect from us. But now in the modern world everything is machined, refined and spit out into packages. Our body doesn't know how to respond to most of this because we're still trying to figure it out. The results are not always desired, and most of the time instead of supporting our evolutionary memory we're attacking it or disregarding it altogether. The almighty dollar runs the show and evolution is thrown to the curb.

Now back to computers and video games. Our brain has a set of impulses it has developed to help us go down the straight and narrow. The problem is our modern world has bypassed the straight and narrow, or failed in its attempt to. Virtual reality mimics the real one and our brain doesn't know how to respond to it. In effect, our brain treats the virtual one like it's the same thing. So what happens is that instead of sowing seeds and migrating north and south and protecting the family and nursing hte children, the mother and father are on their computers pretending to do those things in fake worlds that exist in a shared reality on a chip. Unfortunately, many humans are as vulnerable to their brain chemistry as the obese are to the modern lifestyle of sitting all day and not getting appropriate amounts of exercise. So what has happened is people are hooked to their computers doing what they feel comes naturally, but the reality is that the brain is tricked and they're not going down the straight and narrow as the brain has been taught to. The results are addiction and further health problems unmentioned here.

Normally, a life in this reality is balanced and no one gets addicted to any single thing too much. But with our crazy ideas and technological wizardry we have essentially driven off the tracks and now our evolutionary traits that have required millions of years to develop are throw out and we're blind as bats. We're trying to rewire something we have no understanding of. Good luck.

reply to post by jonnywhite


Damn those new technologies . . . like books, sex, and eating.

Humans should have never gone down that path!

reply to post by Lemon.Fresh

This is a selection pressure. I was led to this term elsewhere.

Google Selection Pressure and have on your mind how all of these technology and lifestyle changes are pressuring humanity in ways that will lead to much misfortune but potential spurts of evolution. What comes out the other side in several hundred years might not be recognizable to present day human beings. My gut feeling tells me that humans will be some combination of biology, ai, and robotics. We will sit a lot, exist indoors most of our lives in space, oceans, underground in colonies on other planets, and elsewhere. Things will be quite different. Between now and then many of us will fail our quest to reproduce our genes. Our lineage will perish and fall into history. But some will succeed and it's their children who will become our future.

I make it sound friendly. But it's not. It's a menacing monster that will probably kill you.

reply to post by jonnywhite


All I am saying is that anything that somebody derives pleasure or satisfaction from can be addicting.

That is how the human body works.

Originally posted by Lemon.Fresh
reply to post by jonnywhite

 

All I am saying is that anything that somebody derives pleasure or satisfaction from can be addicting.

That is how the human body works.

No doubt about that. But the brain and body did not anticipate what's happening right now.

That's why we're having so many problems. The train is off the tracks.

Evolution will still go on, but it will be a bumpy ride.

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
I'm sick of the argument of "oh I turned out awesome", unfortunately not everyone does.

Do you know why you are sick of that argument? Because so many people who play video games turn out awesome! If the vast majority of personal testimonials contradict your argument, then maybe there's something wrong with your argument.

reply to post by Hiasyouwant


Video games are a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have not played them.

Whsoe really gonna admit "I got fat because I didn't burn calories, nor take care of my children, because I was playing world of warcraft" Its not so much of "Oh I eat while im doing this" Its a sat on my bum for 15 hours, ate and burned hardly any calories. Books are not nearly the same as video games, you folks mind boggle me.

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
Whsoe really gonna admit "I got fat because I didn't burn calories, nor take care of my children, because I was playing world of warcraft" Its not so much of "Oh I eat while im doing this" Its a sat on my bum for 15 hours, ate and burned hardly any calories. Books are not nearly the same as video games, you folks mind boggle me.

If you get fat and don't take care of your children because you're playing a game then that's your fault, not the games. It takes hours to read a book as well, and many people enjoy snacking while reading so the analogy is apt.

Originally posted by Hiasyouwant
Whsoe really gonna admit "I got fat because I didn't burn calories, nor take care of my children, because I was playing world of warcraft" Its not so much of "Oh I eat while im doing this" Its a sat on my bum for 15 hours, ate and burned hardly any calories. Books are not nearly the same as video games, you folks mind boggle me.

First I am a game design student and have been an amateur writer so I know a some of the ins and outs of both world and I can tell you that they aren't that different. For simplicity sake games are just books with visuals and interaction. So to make a simpler connection from video games to books is: Book + visuals = Movies, movies + interaction = games.
And the wow thing. People take things to far with everything. You can replace WoW with watching movies or reading books (or any low energy using entertainment). So thats really a weak example.

And to answer to the OP:
Remember when Dungeons and Dragons was satanic and made kids do suicide? The people accusing it of that toke it to far, but a few people who played toke it also to far. But there are people who killed them selfs because of school or there love life. People take things to far its life, deal with it. Dont blame the thing people take to far, but blame the people doing that. As not every person has the same mental stability as others, its just plain ignorant to think of it otherwise.

To end with a quote from crass:
"Take it as entertainment, so please don't take it... and you know the word."

I just want to add a personal gaming story, just because I recently remembered it and it's relevant to this thread

I was playing CoD Black Ops online once and just by chance my team consisted of a couple of skinheads and a few gangster talking black guys. While the racism was prevalent, at least they enjoyed trash talking each other instead of, you know, killing themselves on the street.