Positive Effect Of Video Games

In the last thirty years, video games have changed from a simple task to a complex task and have impacted many societies all over the world (Lee, Aiken, & Hung, 2012). Today, video games are played in over 65% of North American households (NPD Group, 2008). According to the Entertainment Software Association (2008), 25% of people who play video games are under 18 years old, 49% are between 18 and 49, and 26% are over the age of 50. “The media landscape is ever changing, with new technologies resulting in greater interactivity on smaller, graphically superior, and computationally more powerful devices” (Kirsh, 2006, p. 1). Students today are living in a society that is different from the society in which most teachers grew up. Teachers …show more content…
Adachi & Willoughby (2013) performed a study with a goal of determining whether strategic video game play predicted problem solving skills that were self-reported among 1,492 adolescents over their 4 years in high school. The results concluded that the more students played strategic video games, the higher the problem-solving skills were over time. Furthermore, the study also showed a positive relationship between academic grades and strategic video game play, meaning that students who played strategic video games were able to use problem solving strategies to obtain higher grades in …show more content…
1498). Many studies have been published asserting that video games can have harmful effects on students. For instance, Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley (2007) found a relationship between playing violent video games and lower GPAs, cognition and behavior that is more aggressive. In addition, teachers rated students based on their behavioral performance. The study found that students who played violent video games had ratings on their behavioral performance that were negative. Students who did not regularly play violent video games had better behavioral performance scores. Lee, Akin, & Hung (2012) found that high school students who reported playing video games have poorer grades in English than students who did not. Moreover, Brunborg, Mentzoni, & Froyland (2014) found that video game addiction in 13 to 17 year old adolescents was related to lower academic achievement. Another study conducted by Weis & Cerankosky (2010) sought to examine what would happen to the reading and writing scores of male students who did not own a video game system if provided one to use. This study found that the male students who were provided video game systems immediately spent more time playing video games and less time doing homework. The reading and writing