Argument Essay-video games
Playing video games is one of the most familiar recreational activities among adolescents and children today. More than 95 percent of children and adolescents play video games daily. Lau et al.’s (2018) study reveals that 98 percent of teens and children in America presently play video games for at least two to three hours a day, thus harming them. Hence, the increasing popularity of these games has led to more debates among parents, producers, policymakers, researchers, and guardians on the helpfulness and the harmfulness of video games to teenagers and children. While various participants have varying views on this contentious subject. This assignment will support the argument that video games are harmful to children and adolescents because they are addictive, increase aggressive behaviors, and negatively affect school performance.
Arguments
Violent video games cause aggression among children and youths. Even if video games are fun, violent games have harmful effects as they cause aggressive behaviors among children. Kuhn et al. (2019) research states that is playing violent video games results in increased aggressive behaviors, emotions, and thoughts among players in both the long and short term. Although there are varying views on the authenticity of these findings in aggression, a current Meta-analytic study researched the negative impacts of video games on violent (aggressive) behavior, psychological arousal, aggressive reasoning, aggressive effects, prosocial behavior, and empathy. The study’s findings demonstrated a great connection between playing violent video games and all the listed variables. Kuhn et al. (2019) insisted that playing and watching violent video games can potentially heighten aggressive feelings, thoughts, and reactions even with controlled psychological arousal.
Consequently, gamers tend to be hostile, angry, and violent in the short term, resulting in the development of aggressive personalities in the long term. In addition, research demonstrates that watching video games can lead to reduced desensitization and empathy for violence. Accordingly, the gamers’ psychological and emotional reactivity to violence decreases. In the short term, such aggressive behaviors can result in decreased desensitization for a few days and chronic desensitization in the long run. This makes video gamers less empathetic, limiting their ability to assist others. This information shows that adolescents and children exposed to violent video games are prone to have reduced prosocial empathy and behavior, increased cognition, and aggressive behavior in the short and long term.
Engaging in video games can cause addiction. Video games are generally addictive; hence, they can potentially harm learning, psychological, social, and family functioning among children, adolescents, and adults. Shoshani, Braverman & Meirow (2021) study tried to find out the degree to which gaming can cause addiction and realized that about 8.5% of gamers from a sample of 1100 teenagers and children were addicted to playing video games. Presently, video game addiction, also called pathological video gaming, is not yet considered by the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) as an official disorder. Nevertheless, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has called and recommended its addition as a disorder or other behavioral disorders like gambling because they are addictive (Paulus et al., 2019). Currently, teenagers and children cannot stay off the screen. They are always playing games and not engaging in other activities, affirming that video games are addictive. Adolescents and children no longer remember to read, and any slight opportunity, they are on their gadgets playing games. This confirms that video games have far-reaching impacts, which can result in serious sicknesses like addiction.
Finally, playing video games negatively affects school performance for adolescents and children. This is because the time used for studies is shifted to playing games. The fact that gaming or video games are addictive means that the gamer is likely to spend more time playing than studying or doing homework or other self-developing activities. Terry and Malik (2018) conducted a study to discover how gaming affected grade nine learners’ learning. The finding showed that gamers spent less than one hour working on schoolwork or homework and more than 2 hours playing games (Terry & Malik, 2018). This eventually affects their school performance. With this evidence, it is without a doubt that gaming truly affects children’s learning and overall performance at school.
Counterarguments
While the essay’s argument was that playing video games is harmful, supporters of video games and other researchers argue that they are very helpful to children and youths. González et al. (2018) argue that video games are very helpful to learners because the learners who play games can develop good social skills and have better associations with fellow learners. This is because most games’ have collaborative and social constituents. For example, educational videos or well-organized video games teach learners important life skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, and collaboration. This is because they can grab the gamer’s attention, set objectives, provide meaningful feedback, utilize different techniques, and actively engage players while offering reasonable levels of intricacy, allowing players to develop and learn diverse skills (Halbrook et al., 2019).
In addition, researchers claim that video games, especially non-violent video games, can be used to teach complex subjects such as biology and mathematics (González et al., 2018). For example, teachers have effectively used video games to educate learners on health-related issues like types of diabetes, first aid measures, and the effects of smoking, which have proved that video games are helpful to learners.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there have been increased debates on the helpfulness and harmfulness of video games among adolescents and children. The essay argues that video games harm children and adolescents because of their detrimental effects, such as addiction, low performance at school, and increased aggressive behaviors among children and adolescents. On the contrary, playing video games is also helpful to the learner because they help educate learners and help them acquire vital skills such as collaboration, teamwork, and problem-solving skills, among others, that have positive effects on learners in the future. Nonetheless, with the arguments presented, it is obvious that even if playing games benefits adolescents and children, video games have significant detrimental effects on children and adolescents. Hence, these video games are more harmful to adolescents and children, and parents should regulate screen time for adolescents and children.
References
González, C. S. G., del Río, N. G., & Adelantado, V. N. (2018). Exploring the benefits of using gamification and video games for physical exercise: a review of state of the art. IJIMAI, 5(2), 46-52.
Halbrook, Y. J., O’Donnell, A. T., & Msetfi, R. M. (2019). When and how video games can be good: A review of the positive effects of video games on well-being. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 1096-1104.
Kühn, S., Kugler, D. T., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2019). Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study. Molecular psychiatry, 24(8), 1220-1234.
Lau, C., Stewart, S. L., Sarmiento, C., Saklofske, D. H., & Tremblay, P. F. (2018). Who is at risk for problematic video gaming? Risk factors in problematic video gaming in clinically referred Canadian children and adolescents. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2(2), 19.
Oliveira, C. B., Pinto, R. Z., Saraiva, B. T., Tebar, W. R., Delfino, L. D., Franco, M. R., … & Christofaro, D. G. (2020). Effects of active video games on children and adolescents: A systematic review with meta‐analysis. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 30(1), 4-12.
Paulus, F. W., Sander, C. S., Nitze, M., Kramatschek-Pfahler, A. R., Voran, A., & von Gontard, A. (2019). Gaming disorder and computer-mediated communication in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Zeitschrift für Kinder-und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie.
Shoshani, A., Braverman, S., & Meirow, G. (2021). Video games and close relations: Attachment and empathy as predictors of children’s and adolescents’ video game social play and socio-emotional functioning. Computers in Human Behavior, 114, 106578.
Terry, M., & Malik, A. (2018). Video Gaming as a Factor That Affects Academic Performance in Grade Nine. Online Submission.
ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
We’ll write everything from scratch
Question 
QUESTION
Argument Essay
Are video games harmful or helpful to children and adolescents? Pick a stance and argue it.
The file sources to construct your paper provide assignment information and sources you can use, or search other creditable sources.
The scoring guide is the grading rubric.
The cf_argument_template must be used to format the paper, and the instructions have to be followed. You can type over the blue lettering. Reference page and in-text citing have to be in APA 7th edition.
Argument Essay-video games
QUESTION
Introduction
The introduction of this paper includes three elements:
• A brief statement regarding the ongoing debate about whether video games are harmful or helpful to children and adolescents. This can be one or two sentences to give the reader some background on this issue.
• A clear thesis statement telling the reader your position in this debate (videos are harmful or videos are helpful). Because there is research support for both sides of this video game debate, your thesis statement must be concise, very clear, specific, and persuasive. Guidance for creating a clear thesis statement is found in this article by Baggett (2017)..
• A very brief introduction (overview) of the basic arguments that support your thesis statement. Be sure to include at least one in-text citation to a journal article that supports your thesis statement. Including citations raises the professional credibility of your statements above the level of personal opinion. End your introduction by leading the reader into the next section of your paper, your arguments.
Arguments
In this section, present your arguments in greater detail to support your thesis statement. Each paragraph should be a brief statement about what the research shows to support your thesis statement. Apply relevant psychological principles (e.g., violence, prosocial behavior, empathy, bonding, competition, aggression) in your arguments. It is essential that you include in-text citations to the journal articles that support your arguments. Depending on your wording, this section may contain one to three paragraphs.
Counterarguments
In this section, present counterarguments to your thesis statement. Counterarguments show the reader you are aware of the opposing viewpoints and that you can cite sources, using in-text citations, with brief descriptions of the counterarguments while applying relevant psychological principles (violence, prosocial behavior, empathy, etc.) of those counterarguments. Depending on your wording, this section may contain one to three paragraphs.
Conclusion
In this section, you state your conclusion. Your conclusion should support your thesis statement and provide a very brief summary of the arguments and counterarguments presented in your paper. The conclusion is similar to “closing arguments” in a court trial, where the attorneys present their perspective of the results of the trial and why the jury should vote to support their position or client. You are providing a conclusion based on the evidence you have presented in your arguments and counterarguments.
References
The reference page is provided on a separate page of your paper. A reference in APA style for each cited source of information must be included in the reference page. You may also copy and paste references found in the course room if you cite those sources because they are presented in APA style. References are listed alphabetically by the first author’s last name.