Introduction
The Internet plays a significant role in an individual’s daily life as it has become a cohesive component of most daily activities or routines. With the improvement in technology, digitalization has led to the developing of different types of software and applications on various electronic devices.
The fame of video gaming has substantially expanded over the past five years. On average, half of the Americans engage in video games on different electronic gadgets, although a few of those who play self-identify themselves as gamers. Video gaming has several positive and negative effects on the users. This research paper describes the positive impact of gaming, such as reducing flashbacks from posttraumatic stress defects, chronic pain reduction, and training of health care professionals. Gaming also helps enhance student learning, and promotes visual-spatial cognition, arithmetic memorization, and team responsibility.
Positive Effects of Video Games
Community subculture for gamer
Gaming subcultural clusters are those that have interests and beliefs that are different from the primary culture. Despite people having different opinions about these groups, members of such sets may realize several benefits. Gaming creates a network of friends who share similar interests in video games and shared experiences attainable through playing or attending gaming events together (Shi et al. 291). These gaming activities help an individual to maintain contact with friends who might be staying away from different countries or continents.
Internet does bring people together through the aspect of PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect) forming a sub-community of gamers. PLUR is a behavioral and ethical procedure for ravers and video game players that develop out of the need for a secure and inclusive community. The video gamers who feel without a home have a feeling of access to one when they participate in the video games. Individuals perceive the sporting as an event that develops an amazing experience and helps in turning bad conditions into positive ones. Most of the players feel that such games provide an opportunity for love from other players during gaming festivals.
Video Games as a Focused Activity
Video games can be beneficial since they function as a purposeful activity. Various video games provide an opportunity for relaxation, control, offer challenges and facilitate goal achievements. A person would have a feeling of accomplishment after any win during the gaming activity, hence developing self-validation. These gaming activities help individuals de-stress and unwind after work (Kou). Gaming is not a passive activity but involves motivation to a player who faces a challenge and enhances game-based self-improvement.
Cognitive benefits of video games
In contrast to the conventional perception that playing video games is psychologically lazy and sedating, the activities promote a broad range of cognitive capabilities. For instance, the shooter video games that are dominantly violent, such as Grant Theft Auto IV, enhanced cognitive skills. Spatial skills improvements can result from comparably playing commercial shooter games to the skills available in formal education sectors such as universities (Kou). Video games also enhance spatial skills training quickly, which in turn lasts for a prolonged period. Spatial skills resulting from video games are transferable to other spatial functions besides the video game setting.
Emotional benefits of video games
Individuals have increased their involvement in the use of different media categories due to several reasons. The benefits and gratification theory of communications research suggests that individuals use diverse media types to manage their moods and promote their emotional states. Gaming enhances a positive feeling among the youths and children through playing video games (Adachi and Willoughby 202). For instance, playing puzzle video games with limited boundaries and high accessibility improves an individual’s moods, promotes relaxation, and eliminates anxiety.
Video games have a potential positive results on the emotions of players. Moderate video games contribute to the emotional stability and decline in emotional disruptions in infants while also reducing stress and promoting relaxation among the participants. Children develop a happier feeling in response to anger, guilt or frustration after disagreements with parents and hence letting off the steam. Therefore, video games act as moderating activities to the emotions of the individuals who engage in the games.
Health benefits of video games
Gaming has potential benefits to an individual’s emotional, social, cognitive, and motivational development, which has become significant to the medical field. Video games are helpful in intervention in motivating patients and hence enhancing their health outcomes. For instance, the Re-mission game was a successful game that that was significant to child cancer patients (Adachi and Willoughby 203). Video games have also been significant in the education sector as they promote learning outcomes.
Negative Effects of Video Gaming
Dark web is a web of criminal activities
The advancement of technology has resulted in the generation of various types of digital attacks. The web safety forms a primary part of alarm due to the enormous traffic of people who get online to access services. The dark Web is based on anonymity and confidentiality, which uses few methods for its maintenance (Kaur & Randhawa 2131). Proxy, tunneling, domain name system-based bypassing, and onion routing are relevant for maintaining confidentiality and anonymity of the dark Web.
However, the dark Web has transformed to become a hub of criminal attacks due to its anonymity while offering a channel to the criminal world. Several major crimes occur over the Dark Web and include drug trafficking, human trafficking, information leakage, child pornography, and proxying (Kaur & Randhawa 2131). Arms trafficking, onion cloning, contract killers, torture, and revenge porn are also common crimes that use the Dark Web.
The Dark Web is a center of illegal and harmful substances which people sell in exchange for cryptocurrencies. For instance, a Canadian launched a darknet market using a Dark Web which was later closed by the United States police. Illegal drugs have found a broad market in the Dark Web of silk market, which also sold unlicensed pharmaceuticals, which the FBI also shut down in 2013 (Kaur & Randhawa 2132). Other Dark web markets for illegal substances include Alpha Bay, Dream market, Valhalla, and Wall Street market.
An organization called Black Death has been operating on the dark Web through regular alteration of the URLs. Human trafficking has been increasing due to the rising popularity of the dark Web that has a location called the Black Death. For instance, Chloe Ayling, a British model, was a victim of this type of human trafficking incidences (Kaur & Randhawa 2133). This type of Web has also facilitated the trafficking of women for sex and labor.
Dark Web has been a significant resource for hackers to leak vital information. Platforms such as the TOR that accommodate anonymity are essential platforms for activists and law enforcement agencies (Kaur & Randhawa 2133). For example, a hacker leaked over 1.4 billion personal information over the dark Web, which manifested as plain text easily accessible on the Web in 2017.
Frauds involve stealing and selling a customer’s credit card’s personal information and other identifications. Carding fraud is a frequent type of crime on the Dark Web since the members facilitate the sale of credit and debit cards, hence they need to post and specify what they have (Kaur and Randhawa 2135). Vendors also post on different forums on the market using various platforms making the users susceptible to fraudsters.
Gaming platforms through the dark Web offer platforms for illegal arms trafficking through promoting components at prices similar to those on offer in the black-market streets. Europe is the leading source of black-market firearms, with Denmark coming in the second position and having a 12.98% share of firearms vendors in the market (Kaur & Randhawa 2136). Arms trafficking in the black market is continuously endangering the security of various regions due to extensive possession of illegal weapons.
Toxic characters in league of legends
The League of Legends (LoL) is associated with various forms of toxic behaviors such as verbal abuse, harassment, and flaming as examples of negative effects of video gaming and the internet. Some users across multiple communication channels in LoL may develop communication aggression comparable to social media (Kou). The offensive contents communicated to the recipients may include verbal abuse, hate speech, and offensive names. Therefore, communicative aggression effects such as farming, report threatening, and pings are some of the damaging communicative impacts of gaming.
Video gaming can also promote cheating behavior among the users who learn to get unfair advantages over their opponents. Video gamers utilize scripting, smurfing, and rank-boosting as ways of cheating in the game, a character that an individual can extend in real-life situations. Players may also develop mediocritizing in which they create a habit of persistent desire to win even in cases of minimal chances and hence, creating a toxic character (Kou). Gaming similarly triggers negative attitudes in an individual who exhibits utterances or habits to give up.
More negative effects resulting from the league of legends may include in-team disputes that refer to interpersonal differences over personal choices and team objectives. Such disagreements potentially intensify into verbal arguments and toxic conduct (Kou). The development of aggressive behaviors from individuals towards colleagues due to inappropriate resource allocation is likely to extend to real-life contexts like workstations and family settings.
Implication of the Effects of Video Games
Although much of the studies on video games have concentrated on the negative aspects of playing video games there are positive effects that may result from such games. However, there is a contradiction between the benefits of video games and the adverse effects especially on several aspects such as mental health and status, and social wellbeing of the individuals. The impact of video games is considered beneficial through the aspect of PLUR (Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect).
However, there are cases in which video games promote aggression and violence among the players especially among young children. Aggressive behaviors and violent behaviors lead to declining social competence, increased loneliness and diminishing self-esteem resulting from obsessive gaming which also contradicts the positive influence of the games on social development.
Conclusion
Video games today and those on track for development have various forms of play that are beneficial or may have adverse effects. Such competitions have advanced to be more sociable channels than before and hence making online players interact more with friends, families, and total strangers across geographical and cultural borders besides diverse age and generations. Players are gaming online with opponents from diverse socio-economic and languages and ethnic backgrounds. These interactions have the likelihood of influencing an individual’s behavior, and other personal attributes positively or negatively. Video gaming initiates effective learning results and patient outcomes.
Apart from the behavioral effects, video gaming through the Dark Web has also promoted criminal activities such as drug trafficking, illegal firearm businesses and human trafficking. Therefore, policies and regulations would be essential to ensure that games promote the positive aspects of life and the economy while prohibiting and closing the internet sites that enhance damaging activities such as trafficking.
Works Cited
Adachi, Paul JC, and Teena Willoughby. “The Link Between Playing Video Games and Positive Youth Outcomes.” Child Development Perspectives, vol. 11, no. 3, 2017, pp. 202-206. Web.
Kaur, Shubhdeep, and Sukhchandan Randhawa. “Dark Web: A Web of Crimes.” Wireless Personal Communications, vol. 112, no.4, 2020, pp. 2131-2158.
Kou, Yubo. “Toxic Behaviors in Team-Based Competitive Gaming: The Case of League of Legends.” 7th ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, CHI PLAY 2020. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2020.
Shi, Jing, et al. “Understanding the Lives of Problem Gamers: The Meaning, Purpose, and Influences of Video Gaming.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 97, 2019, pp. 291-303. Web.