Video Games: The Negative Influence Of Media

It has always been a popular misconception that media and all its channels of distribution have a negative impact on the development of its consumers, that there is a link between people with low intelligence and how much TV they watch or how much time they spend on the Internet. This has usually been the case with popular culture; its benefits have rarely been considered or have been overshadowed by their “damaging” effects. However, in recent years, things have started to change and some claim that media can actually impact in a positive way the development of the human brain; that it can shape people’s personalities and help the individual discover, improve and perfect skills he would otherwise be unaware of.

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A good example for the latter category is a video-game series called Total War with historical periods ranging from Ancient Rome to Colonial Britain. In an article called “The Benefits of Playing Video Games” published in January 2014, a number of psychologists from the ”Radboud University Nijmegen” present, based on factual research, the benefits of this type of entertainment. According to them, people who play shooter or “action” games “show faster and more accurate attention allocation, higher spatial resolution in visual processing, and enhanced mental rotation abilities”. They also talk about how games improve spatial skills in a relatively short time and how this improvement can be compared with the “effects of formal (high school and university-level) courses aimed at enhancing these same skills.” Moreover, the social benefits of gaming also have to be considered. “Contrary to

Sites such as Wikipedia try to provide as much accurate information as possible to the public and the people are interested more and more today to access these sources of relatively reliable knowledge. There are some who would argue that the internet is not reliable and that it can easily be used to assume someone else’s work and claim it as one’s own, an issue that leads to creating a generation of cheaters and slothful people. Whatever problems the internet might pose, its benefits on education are undeniable. Our society has evolved and adapted to the internet and, as such, using it to cheat is becoming harder and harder. The information found there can be cited and, in this instance, it serves the purpose a book might, as long as the source cited from the internet poses academic value. The majority of the world agrees that the internet is beneficial to education. In a study developed by the “Pew Research Center”, it is proven that “overall, a median of 64% across the 32 nations surveyed say that increasing internet use has a good influence on education, with only 18% saying it has a bad influence. In 24 nations, a majority say the internet has a good influence on education in their country.”

In conclusion, despite its negative reputation, popular culture does indeed have an educational purpose and, most importantly, and educational effect.