Video Games Addiction: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ON YOUTH AND CHILDREN

Abstract: Mankind has developed a lot in the field of Information Technology (IT), Computer Science and Media entertainment. Video games are also the most popular form of media entertainment and gaming environment. It has been popular long before the new generation video games idea was ever thought by the video game designers. Through our research we tried to investigate the positive and negative effects of video games on youth and children. This form of entertainment is more designed attracted among the people, due to the high sophisticated music and environment, which catches every eye. We not only analyzed the previous attempts in this area, but also tried to add some contribution to it. The excessive use of video games makes it more damaging effects on a young mind. Parents and teachers should keep a check on youngsters, and also the companies who design such violent games should keep in account that, what they show through these video games must have some logical or educational value. Many children and youngsters we found through our survey like to play video games because they do not have any other entertaining options. Violent video games are the most appreciated one among children and young people because of the detailed high quality graphics, more realistic images, use of artificial intelligence, complex game strategies, intelligent game inference engines and human-machine interaction. Parents should keep check on their children and select such video games for them which teach their children some useful things and beneficial for them in studies and near future. The teachers in school should also talk more about the advantages of educative games or physical games to develop the young minds more professional and realistic, rather than creating fantasy and fake imaginations. Our survey and research showed us that due to the high attraction of the video games, positive and negative effects are going side by side. Many youth and children do not take the video games seriously and just play them as any another game, while some video game players have disturbed their studies and health by playing the video games for many hours. Many children and young generation denied calling it as an addiction or bad habit. If violence and killing a life is entertainment then human beings will consider it, as a fun and modern society cannot be defined as civilized. This is what we found from our research and survey.