Effect of Video Games on Child Development

Video games have an outrageous effect on kids and, believe it or not, adults all throughout the world. This topic hits mostly high school and college kids because this is a typical activity for a kid to do when they come home from school. Video games, in our opinion, affect sleep patterns the most. Kids stay up until early hours in the morning playing games and then don’t get enough sleep to be successful the next day in the classroom. So, kids staying up late and playing video games is basically a double whammy. This will lead to kids being too tired in school and not learning. In our opinion we have had experience with this issue because a new game would come out, such as Fortnite, and an EA game and you would just play until you look at your alarm clock and it would be six in the morning. After interviewing a variety of teachers and family members, it seems that the average number of hours a day kids play video games came out to about 3.5 hours. That’s a lot of screen time especially because kids wake up at 6 and go to school until 3 and still manage to play for 3.5 hours.  

Rebecca Henry, the school psychologist weighed in on the effects of video games.  She said “there are kids on this earth that are easily influenced to do bad things because of these violent games.”  Christine Ryan, the adjustment counselor,  had a similar answer.  Video games can be addicting and they have a huge effect on kids school work.  Mrs. Henry included “video games are super addicting and it’s hard to stay away from them. It’s hard to keep away.”

For example, kids can get right on the video games after school and play until whenever they’re done beating a mission. That mission can take hours and hours of playing, and by the time kids look at the clock it’s about 11pm. Mrs. Ryan also said, “kids just go home and play all day and it’s bad for their health and school work.” Mrs. Ryan also said that the, “blue light keeps kids up at night and is the final thing kids see before bed.”

As we interviewed both of these great teachers we came to a conclusion. An alternative that works best we believe is sports and physical activities. This helps with making friends and getting fit. Sports is a great way to have kids stay off the video games because they are being active and making friends.

In conclusion kids play too many video games and alternatives are there to help kids. Video games are OK to play but at some point it gets to be too much and kids need to focus on the real world. We very much believe that video games affect the brain, but also helps kids create a social life.