Video Games - Good or not so good?

I personally do not enjoy video games as much as most people. The extent of my video game knowledge consists of old-school Mario Brothers, a few games on the Wii, Mario Kart, and WOW (World of Warcraft). I do not even enjoy some of these games. The only one I continue to play now is Mario Kart and I have not played that game in at least four months. Most video games I simply despise. Past boyfriends and other friends have played video games around me and I usually walk out. I do not enjoy playing nor watching video games. I am not sure exactly why that is. I guess I am more of a person who needs to get up and move around. I do not enjoy sitting down watching at a screen for any length of time. I would much rather get cozy and comfortable on a couch, pull out a book, and read for hours instead of bothering with video games. I do feel like I have a valid opinion, though, since I have played a variety of video games.

I have a few friends and family members who have had their lives consumed with video games. That's probably where I get my negative attitude from. When he was younger, my cousin would sit in his room doing nothing but playing video games for over 10 hours at a time. He would forget to eat, would use the bathroom in his room (such as using a bottle), and only had friends over when they wanted to play video games. He became antisocial because of his addiction to video games and his social life suffered because of it. I also know of a couple other people who developed addictions to video games who led lives similar to this.

On top of that, there are less extreme examples of how video games can affect people. I have had a couple of boyfriends who would cancel plans with me (and other friends) because they were so caught up in a video game and wanted to finish a task, level, etc. I guess I just do not understand the enjoyment of these video games or how they could possibly seem like more fun than spending time with actual people.

In the case of the Henry Viscardi School (HVS), I can see why video games would be beneficial. The children that go to HVS have disabilities, most are severe, and the way they connect to other "normal" children their age are through video games. In this way, video games can be very empowering. However, in the lives of "normal," non-disabled people, I think video game use is detrimental. I've seen how it can take over people's lives and control what they do. And it's not pretty.