Yiming Li The Negative Effects of Playing Computer Games Computer games have been very popular for years

among teenaged students. Nowadays, many students can be easily found in net bars. They skip their classes and are playing computer games. Also, some students tend to be rude to their friends and parents if they interrupt their games, even yelling at or having a fight with them. In order to know why students indulge in games and what the negative influence of playing games is, I did some research and found three articles related to my research question and summarized them. According to Khan (2006), computer game overuse is most widely believed to be the negative psychological factor associated with gaming. It is most commonly seen among MMORPG players (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games), who represent approximately 9% of all players. MMORPGs are competitive, highly social, and provide interactive real-time services. Researchers have attempted to examine such games, and found that these MMPRPG players are marginalized socially, possibly bearing much sense of loneliness or difficulty with social communication and interactions in real life. According to the author, the online game that involving competitive and interactive applications has the most potential for overuse which results in many negative effects. First of all, playing video games in an excessive way would increase aggression. Specifically, an increase in aggressive thoughts and actions is observed for individuals who are under the exposure of violence during game play. Also, much evidence shows that playing games for such a long time would provoke epileptic seizures. In a population-based study, it has been estimated that the number of seizures triggered by video games was 1.5 per 100,000 in the population between ages 7

and 19 years. Besides, there are other physical effects associated with playing games such as musculoskeletal disorder upper extremities and increased metabolic rate. Since computer games overuse would cause so many negative effects, then what are the factors to cause this overuse? I search this question on internet and finally find the answer in another article. According to Flanagan (2014), there is a connection between what players received in brains reward system (A reward system is a system that governs how the brain feels when we do something that results in reward at least some of the time) and the computer game overuse. We all know that bad behavior would be scolded and good performance would be rewarded. Everyone likes to be praised, to be popular and hates being scolded or scorning. For example, which is given by the author, a player kills monsters, gets points and rare items, beats other players, and wins the game, and then he will be satisfied. On the other hand, this player has a rough real life such as difficulty with social interactions, or bad performance on work and study, which makes the game be the main source to cheer him up and give him a sense of achievement. Thus, he would like to spend much more time on the game to obtain the positive feeling and alienate from real life. This vicious circle would cause the game overuse. Due to the game overuse, though many students are very good at playing games, they get bad academic performance and are blocked out of the university. So they think the pro-player is an ideal job for them in the future because it is easy to be pro-players as long as they are good at playing the game, and pro-players are very popular. However, according to the description of pro-players life from Noname (2014), the team leader in Royal Club (a game club of League of Legend, and Noname is his game ID), pro-players have to play the game

under great pressure not for fun or entertaining themselves. First of all, the game club or the team is sponsored by an electronic product company. This means players wage is paid by that company. What the pro-players need to do is to win the world-wide game competition and get reputation, which can help promote to sell the products of the company. However, if the team cannot yield any good results for a long time, the company may delay the payment, and the club will be over. The occupation age of pro-players is generally from 16 to 27 because the finger bones will be dull as they get older. This means a pro-player is not a life-long job. Therefore, most pro-players like the game and have the electric competition dream of the game, and they dont play it for making a living. In conclusion, due to the unsatisfied real life, students may look for the sense of achievement during the game play to satisfy themselves. Though they play well and even want to be pro-players to make a living in the future, the pro-players life is usually over before 30 and it is not easy to live in a pro-players professional life. Also, there are many negative effects while playing games, such as aggression, game overuse and health problem. Actually, I believe that playing games for relaxing in sometimes is fine because students do need to relieve themselves due to the pressure and busy schedule from studying. However, it is not recommended to play it for the whole day or even be addictive in it since the overuse has many negative effects. So it is very important for students to learn how to self-control and schedule their time efficiently.

References Flanagan, J. (2014), The psychology of video game addiction. Retrieved March 2, 2014 from http://theweek.com/article/index/255964/the-psychology-of-video-game-addiction Khan, K. M., (2007), Emotional and behavioral effects of video games and internet overuse. Report of the Council on Science and Public Health, CSAPH Report 12-A-07. Retrieved from http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/csaph/csaph12a07-fulltext.pdf Noname (2014), Pro-players life is not easy - Woman narrator played 4p with clubs manger. Duowan League of legend community. Retrieved March 2, 2014 from http://bbs.duowan.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=36739171&highlight=%E8%8 1%8C%E4%B8%9A%E5%9C%88%E7%9A%84%E5%86%85%E5%B9%95