Psychological Effects of Video Games on Children and Adolescents
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JULY 05, 2020
Psychological Effects of Video Games on Children and Adolescents
Video Games have, over the last decade, substituted traditional outdoor games that children and adolescents were initially accustomed to playing at home. With technological advancement, most children are now spending the greater part of their leisure time indoors engaging in sedentary activities such as watching TV screens, etc. This physical inactivity has consequently led to health issues such as obesity. In response, a lot of strategies, technological mostly, have been employed to promote healthy physiological as well as psychosocial development in children. One of the most tools in this respect is active video games (AVGs), that is, kinetic adventure games. While video games, notably AVGs, have helped in reducing the destructive effects of physical inactivity at home, there are also a number of disadvantages attached to them. In this respect, many studies have been conducted to establish both positive and negative influences that video games have on physiological and psychosocial development in children and adolescents for diagnostic purposes. The most elaborate of these studies on the subject are “Video Gaming and Children’s Psychosocial Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study” by Lobel et al. and “Competitive active video games: Physiological and psychological responses in children and adolescents” by Lison et al. In the former, the authors’ main focus is primarily on the effects of video games on the psychosocial development of children, while the latter mostly narrow down specifically to active video games and how they affect the development of children physiologically and physically. This paper gives an overview of each of the article’s main points of argument as well as a critique on the same.
Video games have invaded nearly every facet of contemporary children’s life and its effects demand a closer look at the whole aspect of its use as an alternative entertainment medium. Lobel and his co-authors conducted a longitudinal study in this regard, with the primary objective of addressing the connection between various forms of video gaming, and the psychological and social development in children and adolescents. The study draws its participants primarily from preadolescent children between 7-11 years of age. The choice of this selection is anchored on the belief that children falling within this age bracket mostly have not formed any behavioral patterns that direct their courses of action when handling issues that affect them both socially and psychologically. Therefore, behavioral or psychological patterns that are promoted by video gaming are likely to have an impact on this age group than others. The study was conducted in two timestamps, with a one-year gap between them. This was to allow for observation of any changes that the participants might develop with time in regards to gaming. Additionally, the main focus was on cooperative gaming and competitive gaming.
Cooperative gaming involves video games that require multiple players to cooperate in teams to achieve a set gaming goal (Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk & Granic, 2017), while competitive gaming involves video games that antagonize players to achieve respective personal gaming goals (Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk & Granic, 2017). Whereas the two gaming concepts differ, there are most often used in tandem. Most competitive video games are team-based and allow players to switch to cooperative modes. Another factor that the study looked into was the effects of gaming on the psychosocial health of children. Several findings were made on the impact of gaming on the various domains of the psychosocial health of the children.
In respect to the effects of gaming frequency on psychosocial health, the study’s findings were that it predicted an increase in internalizing problems such as anxiety and depression. This confirms previous studies in this particular area that classifies children who take part in long hours of gaming as “problematic gamers”. The studies show that most problematic gamers are adolescents with high symptoms of depression and use video games in this case as an escape. This is because gaming provides them with a distraction from many of their real-world problems. Additionally, this over-indulgence in the game makes it causes dependency, the most illustrative example being, avoidance of social interactions. Furthermore, the study found that gaming frequency was hardly associated with any alterations in hyperactivity and inattention and prosocial behavior. It was also not related to any form of externalizing problems such as aggressive behavior or peer problems. Thus, the study’s conclusion was that the only causation attributable to gaming frequency is internalizing problems.
Another finding was on the impact of violent competitive games on prosocial behaviors and conduct problems among children and adolescents. In this case, there were no considerable relationships observed between the games and the children’s conduct problems. Most of the pre-adolescent children lacked interest in or skill to play violent video games. However, the study revealed that the children became increasingly interested in games with violent content as they developed. The reasonable explanations given is that violent contents help the growing children to take an interest in themes such as death as well as to pursue challenges that are greater and commensurate with their developmental abilities. In examining the parents of the children who took an interest in violent games, the study revealed that it had some psychological benefits on them.
The study also found that neither cooperative nor competitive gaming had positive or negative effects on changes in the children’s prosocial behavior. The interaction between cooperative gaming and gaming frequency and prosocial behavior among the children was also found to be greatly insignificant. However, it was observed that competitive gaming and the number of hours of gaming had a significant relationship. The hours of gaming projected that children who played video games for more than 8 hours per week as well as those predisposed to play the games competitively were likely to have less prosocial behavior in comparison to those that played less.
Nevertheless, the study also shows that video games help in conditioning the children’s mind to perform healthy mental habits such as effective communication in the case of cooperative gaming, effective handling of negative feelings of frustration in the case of competitive gaming and determination in personal goals (Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk & Granic, 2017). However, the study shows that the relationship between gaming and hyperactivity is lacking (Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk & Granic, 2017), most children who showed signs of anxiety and depression were mostly those with a deep sense of lack of control to their surrounding environment. Additionally, the study established that video games truly contribute to negative cognitions such as feelings of being an incompetent person, poor academic performance, and even socially destructive tendencies such as self-isolation. Moreover, the study showed that even though video games evoke positive emotions that are quite useful to the psychological wellbeing of children, the positive emotions evoked through traditional outdoor games far much outweigh it. However, the underlining finding of the study is that video games generally have minimal impact on the psychosocial development of children and adolescents.
The research “Competitive active video games: Physiological and psychological responses in children and adolescents” primarily focuses on the physiological and psychological impacts of Kinetic Adventure Games in children as well as adolescents. Similarly, the study draws its participants from the pre-adolescent age group of children between ages 7-13 years. Active video games were introduced with the main aim of causing a reduction in the sedentary behavior that is predominant among children in this age of technology by replacing screen time with gaming time. Unlike other video games, active video games involve the actual motion of the players during gaming. A particular example used in this study is Kinetic Adventures Games (KAGs) which involves either a single-player or multiple competing players (Lisón et al., 2015). The main goal of this given study is to determine the potential negative or positive impacts of introducing a competitive component inactive video games on children, both physiologically and psychologically. The study entailed the use of treadmill walking, and single as well as multiple players in Kinetic Adventures Games. The domain of the children’s physiological and psychological health that was factored in the study was arousal, affect, heart rate, percentage heart rate reserve, and rate of perceived exertion. Most similar studies touching on the effects of active video games on the physical health of children show that the energy expended when children take part in the AVGs over short periods is closely comparable with the energy used in similar physical activities of small intensity. Thus, active video games have hitherto been deemed as a considerably effective tool in the solving of the problem of physical inactivity in children as well as to foster social behavior.
This particular study shows that KAGs effect mental experiences such as self-efficiency perceived ability as well as effect. It finds that an increase in the rate of perceived exertions causes an increase in the effect or emotions (Lisón et al., 2015). The study also shows that competitive gaming inactive video games are perceived by children to be engaging and exhausting than single-player video games. This is because of the physical effort that a player has to employ in gaming. Additionally, it increases the experiences of pleasure and affects that are similar to any other physical activity (Lisón et al., 2015).
Concerning heart rates and percentage heart rate reserves, the study shows that the two domains were heightened in children who took part in Kinetic Adventure Games. However, there were no differences in personal affect intensity by the various types of playing modes in the AVGs. In regards to rates of perceived exertions, competitive multiple player gaming in the active video games show a relatively lower rate in comparison to single-player gaming. This is because the decrease in the rate of perceived exertions in the competitive condition is directly associated with a corresponding increase in the effect. In other words, one is prone to feelings of anxiety when they have no cover, in this case, solo player; unlike in multiple player situations where one is confident that their weakness will be covered by the cooperating player.
Lastly, competitive experiences that underlie AVGs have been found, in this study as well as previous ones, to be very healthy for the psychological wellbeing of children since it teaches them how to deal with competitive environments thereby preparing them for the very competitive society. Active video games are prominent and preferred by most children because it suffers no barriers to participation such as weather conditions, time limitations, and safety of the environment since the activity is in-door. However, there are drawbacks such as high cost of gaming consoles, lack of the ability to manipulate the game settings, and minimal physical movements of players when playing the video games which act as inhabitants to the effective use of AVGs as an alternative of outdoor games. In sum, the study’s finding is that competitive AVGs generally improve the children’s effect as well as the rate of perceived exertion in comparison to solo player games.
Both articles give clear empirical evidence of the positive psychological and social effects of video games on the psychosocial and physiological development of children and adolescents. However, the studies fall short in elucidating how the psychological impacts of video games are biologically reducing the health risk that might result from physical inactivity which is greatly associated with them. Thus, the studies fail to address the primary concern of most pediatric health experts and parents is on both the psychosocial development of their children. In addition to that, the studies do not factor the fact that even though children enjoy engaging their eyes on screen and computers, in comparison to adults they naturally have a short attention span thus take part in a mixture of both physical and video games both indoors and outdoors. Therefore, the common presumption that children exclusively glue themselves on screens is a bit outstretched. Nonetheless, video games are generally effective substitutes for outdoor games especially in highly developed and technologically advanced countries where cases of absentee parenting are common.
References
Lisón, J., Cebolla, A., Guixeres, J., Álvarez-Pitti, J., Escobar, P., & Bruñó, A. et al. (2015). Competitive active video games: Physiological and psychological responses in children and adolescents. Paediatrics & Child Health, 20(7), 373-376. doi: 10.1093/pch/20.7.373
Lobel, A., Engels, R., Stone, L., Burk, W., & Granic, I. (2017). Video Gaming and Children’s Psychosocial Wellbeing: A Longitudinal Study. Journal Of Youth And Adolescence, 46(4), 884-897. doi: 10.1007/s10964-017-0646-z
