Research Proposal

1

Video Games Emotional Impacts on Adolescent

Tyran Hunt

Old Dominion University

COMM601

Dr. Beck

Video Games Emotional Impacts on Adolescent

In the recent past, about two decades ago, video gaming has been increasing among teenagers replacing the previous physical active games that used to be played in the past. The current generation prefers video games that they play on phones, laptops, or even smart screens at the comfort of their homes or at gaming centers, making video games the current significant leisure activity among youths and adolescents in the world. The rise of video games has been boosted by the high rate of changing technology and digitalization and accessibility. Unlike in the past, today is more like a basic need for everyone to have a smartphone, if not a laptop (Harris (2020). So many video games come up every time that no one can exhaust them all, which have also contributed to an increased number of players.

Video games keep the players entertained at any place and are more emblazed as they are safer to play. There is a strong positive social relationship among those playing video games as gaming brings them together to win, generating positive emotions. The rate at which the young generation, especially adolescents, is getting used to video games is alarming, raising the need to find the emotional impacts of excessive gaming on them. Studies have shown that the amount of time used while gamming among the youths has consistently increased from 5 hours 2017 to 6.5 hours in 2020. Video gaming is associated with some benefits like improving memory, enabling multitasking and improving focus. However, too much gaming is associated with vast negative emotional results and life challenges to addicts.

Most teenagers turn into video gaming to forget something disturbing them in real life, maybe the hard times they are going through or mistakes they made. However, despite helping to escape the negative emotion after a bad experience, they don’t help solve the problems (Tremblay (2018). One of the human brain teachers is the negative emotions as they make people think harder to escape the situation and when we use video gaming to forget what is bothering us, the mind is denied a chance to grow. Therefore those obsessed with video games develop weaknesses in solving life challenges which lead to avoiding responsibilities and suffering hard times when mistakes happen.

People with excessive and problematic video gaming are associated with increased anxiety. This happens when they become too addicted to gaming to the point of neglecting their responsibilities; therefore, they are affected by persistent intense and excessive fear and worry about how the situations will be. For instance, a student who has not completed an assignment and has been gamming all time and has no other time to do the work will be anxious to expect from the teacher. Even though anxiety helps alert us to impending dangers enabling paying attention and preparing for issues, too much tension may cause health problems like hypertension and mental issues.

While gaming, people are mindless about their progress in life and are less bothered by what happens in the outside world. Their minds are possessed by their achievements, winning games, and breaking records with their fellow gamers, who judge each other for who they are. However, when these people interact with the real world, they are considered according to personal achievements like dressing, their income, and their property. In most cases, video game addicts have no progress in life as they are unemployed, making them feel not matching with society. Therefore, they develop low self-esteem and uncomfortable since they are not used to being judged (Gentile (2018). This results in avoiding people and living indoors, which denies them the ability to interact with the world and explore, therefore decreasing their confidence. Luck of life progress, hope and facing judgment from the society may lead to further problems as one tends to think much about their lives and maybe stressed and suffer depression with time.

Too much gaming leads to developing a protective and adaptive mechanism to one’s emotional state as video games affect our mental health. This feeling of alexithymia develops due to continuous suppressing of their emotions the more they play games as games have good times when one is winning and bad when one is losing. Due to constant suppressing moments, Gamers develop negative emotions, which may lead to intense pressure to be contained, leading to an emotional outburst. The sentiment they can show is Unger (Roberts (2021). Therefore, to overcome the challenging emotions, they use their only strategy of playing video games all-time and avoiding people. This leads to poor performance in aspects of their lives like physical health, lost appetite, low performance at school, poor hygiene, and getting neglected. Eventually, they have too many negative emotions suppressing them, keeping them in the dark of adverse outcomes.

Video gaming has resulted in poor interaction in many homes as people give more attention to games than family members or friends. When people start experiencing changes in real life and body during adolescence, they tend to avoid interaction and much talk with the family and emblaze being alone playing videos. This has resulted in the loss of important family and friends’ relationships and neglecting parts of life.

However, despite many adverse emotional outcomes associated with gaming research, gaming improves mental health when played responsibly. Video games enable someone to interact with people from all over the world and avoid social isolation and hard reality situations which may make someone be lost in the pool of thoughts. Games keep someone entertained and release the boredom and tiredness after a long period of work or studies hence fighting traumatic thoughts enabling one to evade stress and depression caused by too much thinking (Demetrovics (2017). Research shows that video gaming equips people with motivation, social, emotional, and cognitive benefits, which improves their self-esteem, leading to higher functioning intellectually, making children more competent in school and lower peers and relationship problems.

Technology will keep developing, and newer entertaining games will come up as programmers work hard to find a living. It is advisable that playing video games have its benefits, and everyone should play to enjoy the privileges. However, we should be keen on the time we spend playing these games to not neglect other important life aspects due to being carried away by game fans. Parents and teachers should eliminate and take control of their children, especially adolescents, to prevent them from being lost mentally, which may lead to missing important occasions in life.

References

1. Hollett & Harris (2020). Dimensions of emotion dysregulation associated with problem video gaming. Addiction Research & Theory, 43

2. Lau, Stewart, Sarmiento, Saklofske & Tremblay (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.

3. Buiza-Aguado, Alonso-Canovas, Conde-Mateos, Buiza-Navarrete & Gentile (2018). Problematic video gaming in a young Spanish population: association with psychosocial health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 391

4. Biegun, Edgerton & Roberts (2021). Measuring online video gaming and its association with problem gambling and suspected motivational, mental health, and behavioral risk factors in a sample of university students. 445

5. Király & Demetrovics (2017). Inclusion of Gaming Disorder in ICD has more advantages than disadvantages: Commentary on Scholars’ open debate paper on the World Health Organization ICD-11 Gaming Disorder proposal (Aarseth et al.).283