In my own personal experience, I've noticed that video games tend to be detrimental to a person's character and efficiency, however I wouldn't say that they are completely harmful overall. I've seen in myself and multiple peers that a moderate indulgence in video games usually isn't too difficult on an individual's time and work ethic, but there is a border between moderate and sever indulgence which spells the difference between "Normal Life" and "Isolationist Life."

Purely in myself (and thus probably not completely extendable to others) I have noticed that video games eat away a ton of my time, and more and more I find myself having to set alarms and timers in order to stop gaming in time to complete a paper or such. It's almost impossible to keep up with gaming and my school work at the same time without some sort of give on either end. On more than one occasion I have assigned higher priority to the former, and now I've become pretty desensitized to the decision.

A side-effect of the little time I allow myself for anything outside of gaming and school work is that I have very little time to go and hang out with friends. What I feel to be a result of that is my own anti-social behaviour. I don't mean that people frighten me, I mean that people tend to annoy me. I would much rather be on my own, and I've gone so far as to ask some of my teachers to exclude me from group activities. If that truly is an effect of a severe level of gaming, as I suspect it is, then you should see some amount of isolationism in many people partaking in a similar amount of gaming.

Veering away from myself, I've noticed that gaming tends to be an escape from reality for a lot of people in difficult situations. Of course, one could argue that video games are simply the means to an end for these types of people. As such, I won't do this aspect of the discussion any justice besides a brief mention of it. If anyone wants to delve deeper, feel free.

Although this has been almost exclusively pertaining to myself, I think it's fairly safe to assume that we should be able to see a similar trend of some magnitude (be that .005 or 2) in most people who have crossed that border between moderate and sever gaming. This is, without a doubt, harmful to society. A degradation of responsibility affects every aspect of a person's life, from finances to sanitation. To be completely honest, I haven't thought about the effects of increased isolationism in people's lives beyond the simple fact that it can make it very difficult to actually enter into society. In any case, if either of these effects show to any degree in people that partake in a similar amount of gaming to myself (and many other "gamers") then you could say that video games are harmful to society.

I am taking a psychology course in High School. We had a discussion on how video games are bad for you. My psychology teacher had pretty good points, but I was closer to mine. She stated that games "ruin" the mind and make people hyper, leading them to misbehave. I, myself am a gamer, mostly console to be honest, disagree to this.
These are my reasons, feel free to object:
Games, bring creativity to the picture and burst imagination.
Gaming can lead to game making/developing if possible
Games(some) also improves your reaction time.

No.


People said these things about rock and roll, and every new fad that comes along. They don't understand it so they hate it. I've played videogames my entire life and I am not a violent person in the slightest, neither is my sister or brothers.

People with mental conditions do fucked up shit all the time it's just easier to blame any shooting or stabbing on videogames because they're fairly new and people fear them because they don't understand.

Based off basic logic, Violent video games theoretically help decrease violence. As violent video games sales increased, teen crime rates decreased (please provide evidence ~ Ele). Plus, doing violent things in video games means that you don't have to do them in real life.

Its easier to blame new things or ideas because people want to believe that something pushed them to a breaking point rather than blame the person who did it.

I disagree. Based off basic logic, if you do something violent every day, you will quickly normalise the behaviour. If you play violent games then how could you not become numb to violence?

Because fake violence =/= real violence. I can shiv hoes in GTA all day long, but I'd freak out seeing someone stabbed in real life. You might be normalised to become numb to violence in videogames, but the real world is different because it's just that - real.

You could say this makes the increasing realism of video games a lot more troubling, but it depends if you believe it can ever be convincing enough to desensitise reality.

I mean, you could say that but I think it's something that isn't worth its weight in breath. I think you're referencing violence when you say "reality" because if you're not then you just made the most general fear mongering statement I think I've ever seen. Being desensitised to things doesn't turn you into an emotionless husk of a human being and if it did we'd have been shells of our former selves well before video games became the popular scapegoat for real world violence. It baffles me how people extrapolate the effects of desensitisation to a ridiculous degree when discussing video games (and in general, if I'm honest) as if it were something that was going to turn us all into high-school shooters.

Well, if we asume that some people are already imbalanced enough to want to harm others then finding violence repulsive is probably rather important. Not finding something repulsive or being sensitive about it is fine as long as you do not fantasise about it. I never said being desensitised automatically makes you manic about it but I feel like if videogames actually do make violence less frightening through experience then it could make it a lot easier for some maniac to hurt people. Not everyone has to turn into a maniac for scary shit to happen.

I said desensitise reality because I can't accept that violence is the only thing videogames desensitise. Then again, I'm not sure if I find the desensitisation argument entirely convincing.