After watching the video “Digital Nation”, produced by Rachel Dretzin, my own personal understanding of the internets affects are even greater. Drestzin made this movie to show the cause and effect of internet and video games. She discusses the increase of computer usage, cell phones, and electronics in homes. MIT and other notorious colleges are brought into the mix because the students are always on multiple sources of electronics. The students claim they are completely able to multi-task efficiently. Dr. Gary Small said “We're immersed it in. And it's changing so rapidly, we're just beginning to grasp what's happening. So think of how long it took us to understand that smoking was bad for our health. I think it takes people a while for reality to hit them in the face. It's hard to get people to stop texting while they're driving, although it's a 23 times greater risk of having an accident. How do you get people to stop these behaviors? It's very difficult.” Small is talking about the internet and how it is so intriguing and enticing that people cant stop using it, comparing it to texting and driving. After discussing the simple uses of internet for school and personal pleasure, Dretzin steps into what seems to be the worst issue, gaming. This is where the movie started to intrigue me and gain my full attention. Video gaming has gotten so big that there are now mass meetings of players just to talk, as friends, when all they really know of each other is the player’s character. Chung Young-il is referred to highly in this section. He is a 15 year old boy from Seoul and his mother, Mrs Shim Song-ja, says “When Young-Il starts a game, he doesn't know when to stop and he just plays for hours.” This has become a huge problem and some cities have started classes in which the main goal is to mimic a kids childhood in hopes to get them outside doing more things. The fact that video games are having effects this intense is amazing to me, I know they are addicting and can be extremely intriguing, but that they only play games all day everyday is crazy.
Rachel Dretzin’s is surely correct about the effects of a video games on children, because recent studies show that the main reason kids play these games all day every day is resulting from a desire to live a life as shown in a game. In a game you can be whoever you want to be, you can go from being in poverty to living as a king, and as long as you are playing you feel like you are there. I personally do not receive these deep of affects but I have played games and realized exactly how this feeling could be extremely addicting to some. As far as making friends on line goes, I would be a little cautious, seeing as that you never know who you are really talking too.
As reading Tristan Bosman’s analysis on Digital Nation I definitely agreed with his perspective that gaming can be very addicting. I don’t know that I would go as far as to find my wife or best friend from the online world, as Tristan also stated, but there are some addictive aspects of gaming. Tristan is surely right about how in a gaming world you can be whoever you want to be. You could in real life have no friends and live in poverty, but in the gaming world you could be a king. These kinds of things really attract people into the gaming world. I cannot say I was once extremely addicted to gaming at one point or that I lived in poverty and was a king in a gaming world. But I definitely felt aspects of the desire to always be playing an online game called Runescape. I played this game around my middle school days, because a lot of my friends did. I started to enjoy how I could train my character in certain areas to make him better at combat or fire making. I sort of felt what some gamers feel about no body really knowing who I truly was on this online world. Being who you want on an online world takes caution as well. As Tristan stated you never know who is on the other side of that computer so a bit of carefulness should be applied.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the added facts dylan brought up. Dretzin told the viewers that people have even found there husband/wife, or best friends on gaming websites then met up with them at a convention. Tamara Langman said "You know, we went out and had dates in real life. But to me, I'm always going to consider my first date the time when he broke into a castle to come meet me. I just thought it was so romantic!" Langman was discussing how she met her husband in World of Warcraft. This is just appalling, and to be honest disturbing, that she found romance in a video game. Returning back to the fact that both dylan and i brought up, you never know who you are talking to in the game. Someone could act like the nicest person you have ever seen but is a mass murderer that likes to play video games, yeah i am exaggerating a bit but you really never know unless it is a real friend.
ReplyDeleteDylan and I both agreed on the fact that in a game we can understand why a player gains the sense of being worth something and the feeling of having thousands of friends. although neither of us have felt this way we both come from a different culture than a kid who has no friends in real life and goes home all day to play video games. We both play soccer which helps make alot of fundemental foundations and neither of us have probably ever worried about not having friends. The fact we have this cultural base is what sets us apart from being able to gain the in game connection.