When I see my children and grandchildren sit in front of computer or television screens for hours on end, I wonder if this can be good for them. Although it seems to me it teaches them good hand to eye coordination.
I know some of the games are very violent but I’m not talking about the violent ones for Nintendo, Xbox or Playstations. That’s a whole new story.
Some of these children can’t sit for 30 minutes reading a book or doing their homework but put an Nintendo, Play station, Xbox or Wii control in their hands and they are there for hours
When my children were smaller I worried about them sitting too close to the television for hours, ruining their eyes. I guess that comes from not being raised with a television. We played outdoors, walked everywhere and invented ways to stay busy. Then along came Sony, Panasonic, Magnavox and RCA with televisions and houses being air conditioned and there went the outside play.
In this new age of electronics which seems to boggle the minds of us older generation, I wonder if we are not a little jealous. How much easier it would have been to run our businesses with cell phones and computers.
When I went online to www.wordtracker.com and put in the key words electronic games. I was appalled at what came up: People wanted cheat sheets for Nintendo, Xbox, Playstation2 and Wii games. The top ones were “ps 2 game cheats” with a count of 14602 hits in 24 hours, ‘game cheats for ps2’with 17042 hits in 24 hours, “playstation2 game cheats” with 4858 and “games cheat” with 3898 in 24 hours.
What is this teaching our children? I want to win but I don’t want to cheat doing it. Maybe the children of today don’t think this is cheating but just smart tactics since every one can copy the cheat sheets off the internet and all have the same advantage. Maybe it is not cheating and I am just over reacting. As I read thru one of the sheets it seemed complicated to remember all of this in a fast pace game. But on the bright side “games play” came in with 21377 in a 24 hour period, “play game” with 8078, “play games” with 4102 and “games” with 7949 in a 24 hour period.
I guess time will tell the effects of all these electronic video games, but one thing for sure it certainly keeps the brain dusted off and active.
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