Risks Associated With Video Gaming
If we consider online gaming from the point of view of Piaget’s classification, then this combines the characteristics of three types of games at once: practical, symbolic, and rules-based games. The practical component is related to training and achieving a certain skill in video games, which comes with experience and allows you to move to the next level. The symbolism of computer games is vividly represented by the “as if” situation, the opportunity to plunge into imaginary worlds, unprecedented adventures, and outstanding heroism. And, of course, a game implies a system of rules that a player should follow in order to win.
However, it is not only the above gaming components that are associated with risk. The same refers to a $1 deposit online casino NZ that has certain risks. This review will talk about what online gaming risks are and how they affect gambling fans. So, what are the risks of online gaming, and how can you deal with them?
Why Is Online Gaming So Popular?
The complexity and ambiguity of online gaming provide the ultimate sense of competence and control. This, in fact, makes video games so attractive motivationally, cognitively, and socially. The structure of internal mental factors contributes to the development of computer addiction.
The following main factors of interest in computer games can be distinguished:
- Roles (mostly heroic);
- Rules that give a sense of control, strength, and performance;
- Online communication;
- The fantasy side of the game.
A separate task for the player is to discover the rules and strategies that lead to success in a particular game. Many of the rules are unknown or implicit at the beginning of the game. During the game, they can transform and become more complicated. The process of comprehending these rules requires the inclusion of a number of cognitive abilities, such as:
- Broad orientation;
- Analysis;
- Generalization;
- Testing approach;
- Data structuring;
- Generating ideas.
This gives a powerful impetus to the experience of feelings of pleasure, success, and competence. Many computer games open up opportunities for the implementation of the exploratory behavior of adolescents, the development of alternative strategies, and the construction of new realities.
Risks and Threats of Online Gaming
Popular online games also contain a certain challenge for a player, which can be a bet on self-overcoming. Of course, this is a competition with oneself, which is one of the most attractive forms of activity. The required high coordination and concentration, the acquisition of individual gaming experience, also increase the level of mental activity of the player. Computer games undoubtedly capture adolescents, have an impact on the psyche on the emotional, motivational, and cognitive levels. And this effect is not always positive.
The First Threat
The first threat in computer games is the isolation of a gamer from traditions, history, and the spiritual foundation of society. Market-funded computer game development has little interest in fostering healthy, socially-focused experiences for children and adolescents. The supplied cultural products are motivated not by the development and socialization of new generations, but by economic considerations of benefit and consumption.
So, in a study of the romantic ideas of adolescents, who devoted most of their leisure time to computers, it was found that romanticism is associated with going to a restaurant. And the more expensive the restaurant and the more exotic the dishes are, the more romantic relationships a couple can have.
Consumer orientation embodied in computer games causes irreparable harm to the mental health of young people. If we consider that modern forms of video games based on feedback, realism, and simulation of reality have an extremely high formative and educational potential, then the negative consequences of sexism, violence, and lack of spirituality are catastrophically large-scale.
The Second Threat
The second problem associated with gaming is social isolation. Of course, adolescents can share the experience gained in the game, but the nature of computer games is such that they tend to isolate adolescents from each other rather than unite them. Video games do not provide for any social mediation, neither actions nor meanings are changed under the influence of interpersonal relationships or social contacts. The concepts of “justice”, “help”, “good” are not correlated with real people.
Despite the fact that computer games are a solitary activity, there is still no unequivocal evidence of increasing isolation of children and adolescents who are addicted to digital technologies. Perhaps computers cause fear and negativism in parents because this is a space that they almost cannot control. This is the area of the independence of growing up children. If a teenager sat for hours not at a computer but at a book, parents would not feel anxious. This is despite the fact that communication with peers is the most important age-related task of development in adolescence, and a teenager who sits at home is obviously at risk of establishing relationships with others.
The Third Threat
Computer addiction is clearly gender-specific. Most of the players are boys and men. Few girls are passionate about computer games, and they are generally less successful at games than boys. Research reveals some reasons for such gender differentiation, which lie both in the field of psychophysiological characteristics and in the area of value orientations.
One of the explanations is associated with differences in the development of spatial representations in boys and girls, which persist into adulthood (women who are successful in architecture are still rare). Many computer games are associated with complex landscape constructions, orientation in labyrinths, movement in a complexly organized space.