Are Video Games Making Kids Smarter Or Are They Affecting Their Attention Spans?

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There has been arguments between adults and teenagers on whether or not video games affect children's thinking.

Some say they make kids smarter, some say that it affects their grades and distracts them. Everyone has their own opinion on this matter so let me show mine.

Video games are made to entertain people no matter what their age is. Some are made for children which are very easy to play and some are made for teenagers and adults which contain themes that suit their ages. A popular them for adults and teenagers are battle royale and multiplayer games. Back to the topic at hand, do video games distract children or do they make them smarter? If you were to ask me this question, I would say that it does both. Since according to Isaac Newton's third law, every action has its equal opposite reaction, both side applies to the effects of video games for children. So to better understand which effect is most likely to effect children's thinking more than the other, let's look at both sides.

The first side of the argument is that video games make children smarter. Since like I said earlier both effects apply to the child's thinking, let's ask the question, how do video games make children smarter? Well, it depends on the child's age on how it makes them smarter but no matter what, their thinking becomes better when playing video games. These games are usually dress ups or cooking games for girls and building games or simple fighting games for boys. As for why I think this is the usual games for children, I have grown up playing on a website called y8 with my friends and up until now, I still see children playing these kinds of games. For girls, these dress up games can build on how they want to dress up and enhances their fashion for clothes. As for the cooking games, while they are playing it, they might pick up recipes used in the games that they can apply in real life once they grow up. These kind of games can also create passion for these themes. They might want to be chefs, fashionistas, or tailors when they grow up. As for boys, building games like Minecraft can enhance their thinking. These games can make them think about styles and in these games, they can build their own dream house so that in the future, if they ever want to, they can make thier own one in real life. Simple fighting games for boys are games that satisfies their hunger for destruction. Every now and then, boys would want chaos and destruction every now and then just for fun. Well, I can't really assure that but as for what I'm seeing on my cousins I think that that's about right. Popular fighting games are PUBG and Fortnite. If you look at it from a different perspective, the new popular game called Among Us can also be considered a fighting game for all ages and genders. These type of games can enhance their strategic thinking for survival. Let's take Among Us for example. This game features about 10 crew mates where 1 or 2 of them is a killer or also known as an imposter. While crew mates are doing tasks to win, they also need to figure out who the imposters are without getting killed. It is a fun game where strategic thinking is everything.

Now that we are done with the first side, let's go to the opposing side of the argument. Do video games distract kids? Yes, like I said, it is one of the effects of video games. So let's ask another question, how do video games distract children. Well, I was taught that too much is bad and well, that applies to this. There is no problem in playing video games since as said in the previous argument is that video games can enhance strategic thinking and well, thinking in general. The problem is playing too much. When children play video games very often, they slowly descend into addiction and you may be thinking that the word addiction is quite exaggerating at this point but when you look at it closely, I'm not wrong. Children are easily addicted to different things when they enjoy it. There are children in different parts of the world where they are so addicted to video games, they stay up all night playing it causing them to pick up insomnia. Some even have their visions affected by this. When children get addicted to video games, it will be very difficult to help them get through it because gadgets, which contain different video games, are everywhere! Especially now that the pandemic is going on, which requires us to stay inside, schools and companies require gadgets for classes and meetings. That's why now that we are forced inside, parents should check on their children every now and then and help them study because hardly any students study without getting distracted by their gadgets which is easily within their reach.

Now that we have analyzed each side carefully, which effect affects the children more? The good effect or the bad one? As for my opinion, I think that during this pandemic, the most effect that will affect children is the bad one where children get distracted by their gadgets. Like I said before, the other effect still applies but the bad one will surely affect children's thinking and actions more than the other. This answer is based off, unfortunately, me. I myself, is getting distracted with other things more than my studies. I still study and do my tasks (obviously) but I most likely will procrastinate and wait a few days before doing it. I am currently trying to change that (by trying to writing this essay in less than an hour) and I have been trying to understand go back on past lessons and review them carefully before trying to learn lessons that will possibly be taught in the coming weeks and I hope that I will become successful in this goal.