Purpose
This work is conducted to define, and to address the problem about the negative effects of video games on the youth. This is through investigation, analysis and recommendation on what to do about this grave problem that largely goes unresolved.
Summary
The first part of this memo is the introduction which details how advancements in technology have consequently led to advancements in electronic media, how students indulge in video gaming activities and the effect of these activities. The other part details how the research is conducted, what I discovered, and my conclusion and finally, what I consider the best course of action to tackle the demise of youth being caused by excessive video game playing.
Introduction
Technological advancements have brought with them advancements in videogame technology. Youths are the biggest target population for electronic media production companies and particularly, video game producers. There are thousands of videogames currently flooding the market, with each production company trying to come up with a product that will compete rival producers. Some come with an online feature through which gamers can connect with other gamers and compete. Other games have sequels, which continue the story of the previous game with the aim of killing the suspense which the gamer was left in. The sequel may extend into a trilogy with the next version usually being better than the previous one. The impact of this is that gaming ends up becoming addictive with youths, particularly students spending a large portion of their day playing video games, time that could have been dedicated to other important activities is spent on games. It ends up being damaging to the social and most importantly, academic development of these youths (Signoreli 34). My research was conducted with the aim of addressing the issue of the demise of youths through overindulgence in videogames.
Research Methods
I conducted my study in a nearby college, selecting two hundred willing respondents. They agreed to contribute on condition that they remain anonymous. Since it was a college, I opted on using simple random sampling techniques as it is highly likely that one out of five student’s plays video games. After having oriented them with the purpose of the study, I presented them each with a questionnaire which had the following questions:
1. How often do you play video games in a week?
2. How many hours a day do you spend playing video games?
3. Do you subscribe to online platforms for playing video games?
4. After playing the first release of a video game, do you also look for other releases of the game?
5. Do you consider video games to have had a positive, negative or no impact at all on your social life?
6. Have your grades improved, remained constant or dropped since you started playing video games?
The responses obtained were combined and analyzed by means of statistical packages to find the average from which most of my analysis was done.
Results
It is important to note that the simple random sampling was conducted on 900 students after which filtering were done to separate the gamers from the non-gamers and leave us with only two hundred respondents. The analysis was conducted on the gamers only as they were the group most suited to respond to the questionnaire.
On average, the respondents were found to indulge in video games six days in a week, which is a shocking 85%. The average number of hours per day spent playing video games was found to be eight hours which is 33%. Out of the two hundred participants, one hundred and forty eight subscribed to online gaming platform which is 74%. One hundred and twenty two procured the next release of a game that they had played, that is 61% (Schwalb, Barbara and Jun 25). Nineteen had seen their grades improve since they started playing, thirty three had their grades remain constant and one hundred and forty eight had seen a dip in their academic performance, that is, 9.5%, 16.5% and 74% respectively.
Conclusions
I found that for most gamers, there is time set aside almost every day to play video games; this was indicated by the 85% figure. Around a third of the day is spent playing video game which is a pretty large portion to spend this way. Roughly three quarters of the respondents admitted to having subscribed to online platforms on which they played videogames. Sixty one percent sought out other releases of a video game after having played one installation. Not surprisingly, almost three quarters of the respondents had seen their academic performance drop since they started playing videogames (Tobias, and Fletcher 51). From these observations, it is clear that video games are addictive and lead to some sort of obsession as a lot of time is spent on them. There is also a connection between excessive video game playing and poor academic performance. It is clear that the result of video game playing leans on the negative side.
Recommendation
One way to solve this problem would be a sensitization campaign to the youths on how damaging excessively playing video games can be in the areas of social and academic performance. Another remedy would be to increase the tax on video game production companies which would in turn make their products more expensive and difficult for the youths to procure. The video game producers should also put firewalls that make their games harder to crack for hackers, since a lot of the youth play these cracked games. Doing this would greatly reduce the demise of youth through video games.
References
Schwalb,David W,Barbara J Schwalb and Jun Nakazewa. Applied Developmental Psychology:Theory,Practice and Research from Japan,Greenwich. 2015. Print.
Signoreli,Nancy.Violence in the Media:A Reference Handbook .2015. Print.
Tobias,Sigmund and J D Fletcher. Computer Games and Instruction .Albany:State University of New York (2011)
