Videogames have been a developing phenomenon since the late 50s. Since then gaming has become its own realm, its own culture. Gaming has made its way into popular media and has become a very popular outlet of entertainment for people of today. So much so that on average the amount of time spent playing videogames is 6.5 hours per week as of 2017 (The Nielson Company, 2017). With that in mind, there are many things to understand about gaming and the affects it has had on people. It affected me, I’m someone who played those hours in two days and now I’m lost. But enough about me, I want to talk about careers and how excessive gaming has affected children’s careers as that got older.
Well first, we have to understand what’s considered excessive gaming. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the amount of time children should be playing these games are from 30 minutes to 60 minutes/1 hour. On top of that there should be some days in which videogames aren’t played during the week. So, when defining excessive should it be more than the allotted time. I don’t believe so because the time differs for videogames and just general screen time. When reading a study about average screen time and videogame time with how it relates to academic performance on Australian children, the screen time in which most people played was 1 hour (608 /1704 children). But when doing the mean, I found out that it was 243.428 which is closer to the 195 at 3 hours that the 398 at 2 hours. Due to this I’d like to believe that gaming is considered excessive when it passes 3 hours, for a weekday. For the weekend the numbers in the study differ but the outcome of 3 hours being closest to the mean stays the same. Therefore, for the study what is considered excessive game playing is more than 3 hours.
So where does careers come into all this? Since gaming is becoming popular it has a market. America is the place where anything can be commercialized. Naturally videogames were as well. But what I want to talk about is how play these games excessively shifts someone’s mindset on their future job, not videogame careers themselves. For this we have to see how people’s mindset are effected by playing these games.
A study done by researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and University Medical Center shows the effects of what playing theses games does to the mind. The table below goes through people’s reasons for playing vs coping methods as well as affect. The negative affects truly depend on the reason for playing the game. For example, if people play games to distract themselves from stress are very shy, lonely, have low self-esteem/efficacy and aren’t satisfied with their life . This changes for people who play games for social reasons. Those people typically had a positive outcome and they tend to gain more friends online as well as off, aren’t shy, are more satisfied with their life and have the highest positive effect while playing.
This translates careers because of personality traits being changed in a person. If someone play games to distract, they would go for a job that would have less interaction and might not reach for the starts. If someone else plays games for social reasons, they would lean towards a career that interacts with more people as well as aim for higher careers such as a CEO.
So it’s best to reflect on why you played and what you got out of it to be able to understand where you are now. Then you can finally find the answer you’re looking for.
Effect of internet use and electronic game-play on academic performance of Australian children: Islam Md Irteja; Biswas Raaj Kishore; Khanum Rasheda. Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group); London Vol. 10, Iss. 1, (2020) https://www-proquest-com.du.idm.oclc.org/docview/2473298919?accountid=14608&pq-origsite=primo
Healthy Limits on Video Games. Child Mind Institute. (2020, August 24). https://childmind.org/article/healthy-limits-on-video-games/.
von der Heiden, J. M., Braun, B., Müller, K. W., & Egloff, B. (2019, July 11). The Association Between Video Gaming and Psychological Functioning. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731/full.