spartan max2, on 18 December 2012 - 04:33 PM, said:
Seeker can i ask you how much experience have you had with playing video games? and playing with your freinds online?
Im 18 I have been raised in this video game generation.If you were raised in this generation then you would understand how dumb it sounds everytime the older generation attacks video games.
Nonething can fully be understood from the outside looking in.
I'm 33. I grew up with games just like you. Albeit it was new when I was growing up. I was addicted once aswell. I got stuck on starcraft and diablo when I was in college. My grades started to suffer, I wasn't training for my competitions as much etc etc. sitting beside my fiancé's hospital bed when, i was about 21 in the intensive care unit after a devistating car accident, I popped open my lap top for another round of diablo. At some point i looked over at her swolen face and near solid purple body and how much useless time had been spent on these games flashes before my eyes. I uninstalled my games and broke the CDs and did not look back.
Fastforward five years. I have successfully started my business. I own a house at 26, my wife ( same woman) is pregnant. I buy an Xbox. I have a good time playing ghost recon, call of duty, evenchually halo. There really isnt any problem.... It's fun. My mind is more stable, I have my priorities straight, I can turn the dam thing off and not pine for it. But, yet I am disturbed by the children I am playing against online. they are insanely vulgar and violent. I think I mentioned a line that sticks with me on this thread somewhere. After a two week binge of ghost recon, I realize all the time wasted on this junk is useless. I packed up the Xbox and buy a guitar and change my free time to more .... Enlightening and educational persuits. admitadly I would occasionally pop out halo or starwars. I'm a big fan of he sniper. But I always got acused of being something called a "camper".
Fast forward 5-7 years. I have got kids of my own. Have have been working with kids since I was a kid. I'm starting to see a very large number of teenage boys being increasingly addicted to this stuff. The games are awesome... No doubt. The over all level of coordination has drastically decreased, I teach martial arts I meet. We children and teens all the time. There are autistic and aspergers kids everywhere, ADD, bipolar disorders.
I ran into one of my families that I used to teach. The boy was an incredible gymnest with olympic dreams. I was talking with them in a resturante just as they were leaving. He was fidgeting and makeing these odd noises like some sort of addict. I kind of looked at the parents and asked if he was alright. She said oh.... He just wants to be at home playing Warcraft. That's just on incident in many.
When the kids come in, I can tell this flat distant look on their face is from gameing. I call them out on it all the time. Parents drop their kids off with iPads to play games while they wait for their siblings to get out of class. The little eyes b eat intensely back and forth, and you cannot even get their attention. I have popped open the Xbox a few times with my kids, but quickly put it away because afterwords they beg and plead for me to get it out. They also beg and plead to use the spare iPhone for games.
Kids literally quit sports and other healthy activities to play more minecraft. Some say parents fault..... Yes. But for some parents and apathetic kid who dosnt want to do anything but play games is tuff to get motivated for something. When we look back at this years from now we will see that these addictions were nearly as unhealthy as others. There are geniuses behind these games competing for the attention of our children. And they get more sophisticated every year. Amazingly so.
Preteens and teenage boys enter a phase of their life called "the quest phase" this is a time in their life when, that they hyper fixate on their intrests. They become amazingly skilled at their chosen endevours. The sky is the limit ... music, athletics, technology, academics... You name it. I have been raising leaders my entire career. I see it day in and day out. The kids that waste their quest phase on games, have a difficult time with emotional intelligence, do not comit themselves to hardly anything, and in general do not rise to their potential. The kids, that by virtue of themselves or their parents that were more active in other persuits are 10 times better off. The scary thing is is that boys like this are becoming more and more rare. My entire staff consist mostly of young women. One boy. And he has purposely avoided being stuck on games, has his own band, is a tinkerer, and is now on my paid staff because he is reliable and thoughtful. All my other hopefuls cannot get off the games. They huddle in groups discussing how they are going to do his and that on the latest gameing craze.
I have a feeling science will evenchually reveal how damaging alloweing PhDs in child psychology that work for gameing company's access to our young minds really Is.
Being 18, I don't expect you to understand this, but I think you showed great wisdom is suggesting Somone from outside of something dosnt really understand it. I'm no fuddy dudey yet, but I'm old enough to have peespectives that you may not be aware of yet. Its good to look at a aubject from outside the box to. This gives you aperspective of actual benefits and dangers. I have explored this through out my life. I am very concerned. I think allowing our youth to fixate on games in the end will turn out to be very damgeing. I look at all the boys that have grown to be successful I college and beyond. The ones that stick out and attend peppersine, MIT, and other great schools. Where never big time gamers. The ones that were.... Well couldnt tell you.... They dont stick things out very well. And yes most of it was because of careful parental control. Still I think somehow we are doing the kids who's parents are unaware a disservice by not speaking up.
Sorry for the jumbled sentences typing fast on the iPhone does that. I don't really have time to edit.
Edited by Seeker79, 18 December 2012 - 05:51 PM.
"To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related."---Bruce Lee
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