March 31, 2014
Prof. Pepp
ENG 101

Media and Students.

The relations between media consumption, especially TV viewing, and school performance have been extensively examined by social scientists. Even though video game playing may have replace TV viewing as the most frequent form of media usage, research shows that the uses of media and especially video games have an impact on students for several reasons.
Video games could help on the students learning. Learning requires a person to pay attention to the new information, to think about it, process it, and make it meaningful, so the information is moved to the long-term memory. When a video game players plays video games, their experience is very similar, if not the same in process and aspects to learning. When players play a video game they need to pay attention to the commands information provided by the game. They have to do almost the same as the learning process such as pay attention and think about it before the next move. It could be a different method to practice how to process new information and make it meaningful.
Another benefit of playing video games is how fast the video gamers can switch and divide attention to moving objects on the screen. The benefit is demonstrated by a resent research by Green & Bavelier Greenfield. In a study in which used video gamer and no video gamers; “results indicated that video game players not only far outperformed non players in identifying an object in cluttered scenes, but they can also process a rapid steam of a visual information with greater efficiency”.
Although video games have benefits, they also have a negative impact on students. Video games could become an addiction. Large numbers of children, teens and adults spend significant portions of their free or even busy time playing video games. This can hurt the performance in schools. The popularity of video games has grown tremendously over the past twenty years. Concluded by Marshall, Gorely & Biddle “Contemporary youth report watching between 2 and 3 hours of TV per day and playing video games between 23 ad 60 minutes per day”. Also Gentile state “Almost eighty-one percent of American youth report playing once per month and about 9% of 8 to 18 year olds can be considered addicted”. “Fewer studies have addressed adult playing time, but 49% of gamers are between 18-49 years old and the average game players age is 34” shown by Entertainment Software Association. “Overall, approximately 81% of 18-29 year old play video games” by Lenhart, Jones & MacGill. Looking at those facts is consider that people from 18 to 29 years old are the people who are more likely to play video games, that age is when students are about to start college. However, the problem is not there. The real problem is in the younger population that is easily to influence in order to become addict to video games.