Procrastination Is Killer
Around midnight on a tuesday I received a very mysterious phone call from a very close friend of mine. He is not the type of person who calls you that late at night and usually is always the one to text instead of call. I heard the phone buzz a couple times before I decided to pick it up and see what he wanted. It was a very straight to the point phone call with very few words exchanged. “Do you want to play some Xbox?” were the only words that came out of his mouth. After I thought for a few seconds, I simply responded with “I have a test tomorrow but I guess a few games would never hurt anyone.” At that second, I knew that I had made a huge mistake and that I should have been studying for the gigantic math test I had the next day at 8 in the morning. After a couple games had gone by, I had completely forgotten that I had the math test the next day so I ended up staying up for 3 more hours and did not go to bed until around 3 a.m.. Unfortunately, I ended up missing class and missing the test that I knew I could get a good grade on. That ended up bring my grade down two letter grades. In the end, I completely regret staying up to play those video games with my friend.
When Did My Addiction Start?
Since the day that I was born I have always been drawn to video games and the positive effects that they have had on me. Yeah, I spent countless hours trying to beat the immortal dragon with little to no success. Yeah, I pulled all nighters just to get to the next rank or level in a game. Yeah, I spent my christmas money on the newest, coolest video games. That is just who I am, and what I like to do in my freetime. HuffingtonPost.com actually did a study on the effects that video games have on your brain. They conducted the study by having one group of 23 males with an average age of 25 to play videogames for 30 minutes each day. They also had another group of 23 males with a average age of 25 to not play video games at all for the next two months. They examined the brains using an MRI machine, and they found that the gaming group had a rise in gray matter in the right hippocampus, right prefrontal cortex, and the cerebellum. All of these areas of the brain are responsible for different things in your everyday life. They can all be responsible for spatial navigation, memory formation, strategic planning, and fine motor skills in the hands. They also found that if you play “brain-teasing” games for just two hours a week may help slow the degree of mental decay association with the natural aging process. Although these tests could be wrong, It seems like playing video games could possibly increase how old I live. Seeing that I have played video games almost my entire life, hopefully it has gained me a couple years of life in the long run.
Escape From The Real World
As a child, my parents got divorced at a very young age. I was only 11 or 12 when they decided to split up, and it was one of the worst times of my life. I would not be able to sleep and would miss several days of school per week. I had fallen into a crazy deep depression that seemed to never go away. It had gotten to the point where I was sad all the time and had no motivation to do anything so my dad decided to take me to a therapist and psychiatrist once a week and that seemed to help me a lot. She recommended that I play some sort of video game to help me escape from the things that were going on around me in my life. I was also bullied heavily in middle school, middle school should be a place for kids to learn and blossom into the person they are years down the road. It had gotten so bad to a point that I was being pushed down in the halls at school, unfortunately I had broken my arm from the bullies I was facing. In 2010, researchers from the American Pain Society did a research program targeting people who have had traumatic experiences in their life. They have proven that video games effectively reduce anxiety and pain caused by medical or chronic illness. Playing video games allows the brain to stay busy using other senses instead of focusing on pain. Also, video games release endorphins in the brain, endorphins are chemicals in the brain that are generally associated with happiness and capable of numbing discomfort. Seeing that video games do have a positive effect on the brain, I now know that when I was younger the video games did help me through the troubled times that I was experiencing.
“Stop Staring At Your TV, It Will Make You Blind!” – My Mom
Although video games helped me escape from the reality of my life, my family always thought that they were terrible for your eyes sight. I always believed them and had asked my mom to go and get my eyes tested so I could possibly get contacts or glasses to help me see. She had always blamed my bad eyesight on the fact that I was always sitting a foot in front of my TV screen. She got my eyes tested and it turned out that I did need glasses because I had poor vision when trying to distinguish items in the distance. But wait, I thought video games were supposed to make your close vision worse? Apparently the concept that the worsen your vision was wrong. According to a University of Rochester study, actually increases your ability to distinguish items that are close to you. They performed a study on two types of people. The first group of people were hardcore Call of Duty players and they had those players play Sims 2 for a period of time, while they are still video games they have different responses in your brain while playing the other game. The second group of people just played Call of Duty and saw a boost in their “contrast sensitivity function” or the ability to discern subtle changes in the brightness of an image. The researchers found out that the process of locating and aiming at enemies exercised the gamers eyesight. They also believe that using action games serve as a way to correct bad eyesight. This shows that playing video games has never had negative effects on the eyesight of players, and that my mom was wrong all those years ago when I was continuously yelled at to stop playing that specific game that I have always loved to play.
Will Playing Video Games Make You Violent?
Another big issue I was faced being a huge Call of Duty player as a child was, “will playing this make me a violent person?” In my opinion action packed, player vs. player killing video games do not make children more or less violent. People are born with motives in their brain that they will do what they want regardless of what video games they play or how they were raised. Although violent video games have been linked to school shooters and other people who commit mass acts of terror towards a group of innocent people, they have never made me more of a violent person that who I am today. Yes, as a child I did get into fights and arguments with other boys in my school but that was always because they had said something to me or something about my family being split up and it was always a retaliation. According to CNN.com, an 18 year old gunman that killed 9 people in Munich, Germany was a huge fan of first person shooter video games. The American Psychological Association and the american Academy of Pediatrics are attempting to take a stand against these big video game companies in an attempt to make their games less violent and include less blood on the death of an enemy player. The groups report that more than 90% of children in the United States play video games. Among the children aged 12 to 17, the number of children that play violent video games rises to 97%. Another statistic they found is that 85% or more of video games on the market contain some form of violence. As the graph to the right states, throughout the years of 1996 to 2004 the amount of violent crime offences has actually lowered throughout that 8 year period. In my opinion, children learn their motives in life from their parents and how their parents raise them. As you have previously read, I have been through alot in my life but not once have I thought about commiting mass acts of terrorism to anyone. An interesting quote that I found was said by a representative of the American Academy of Pediatrics, he stated “video game companies should not use human or other living targets or award points for killing, because this teaches children to associate pleasure and success with their ability to cause pain and suffering to others.” In my opinion, that statement is completely false and should not have been said. Although these violent video games do influence children to commit illegal offences, it also helps people feel what being in the military is like. A lot of children join the army because they enjoy what they have played in video games and would like to do it in real life. I am all for children being able to play these violent video games because it could potentially increase our military recruitment rates.
Won’t These Games Make My Child Antisocial?
Many concerned parents think that these video games will make their children lack the enthusiasm to go outside and interact with other children. Many parents do not understand that many of the players actually have microphones and talk freely with one another. According to a study done by Statista.com, an average of 67% of gamers use a microphone to interact with other players online. Personally, I use a microphone to talk strategy and also use it to communicate to my teammates about enemy locations. Gamers also use them to say things without being judged by their peers in real life, they can talk about whatever they want and hopefully find someone who shares the same passion as that person. A study done by an independent researcher (Tanner Helland) found that 63% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them, 27% of players play games with people who they connect with through the internet, and only 11% of players solely by themselves. These statistics could be skewed because some of the solo players still use microphones to communicate to other players. In a world where everyone is glued to their phones, a microphone on a video game console is very beneficial because once again, it allows people of all ages to escape from their everyday life and be someone different online.
How To Stop Procrastinating?
Although there are many people who have their own ways to procrastinate large tasks or events, there is a way to stop. The first step in solving is realizing. Once you realize that you are not doing what you should be than you can try and move your brain back into the grind of doing what you need to be doing. Procrastination is simply defined as “a temporary relief from stress.” An article written on Forbes.com lists seven strategies on how you can end procrastination and start into action. The seven steps are: write down your goal and give yourself a deadline, break your goal into small pieces, visualize the future you want, harness fear, build accountability, reward progress, act bravely. If you follow these simple yet effective steps you can end all of your procrastination problems and start on the topic that you have been trying to work on.
The End Of The Start
You may be wondering how all the topics stated relate back to each other. Procrastination, video games, violent attacks, and being antisocial actually all relate in a couple ways. They could have a possibility to happen in almost a chain reaction. First off, you could be procrastinating a large project or paper. Secondly, that leads to the majority of college students to play video games or twiddle around on his/her phone. Next, it could lead to violent outlash against roommates, friends, or fraternity/sorority members. Lastly, it definitely leads to being antisocial because in the end you will always need to write that paper or take that test you have been putting off. Although you could just not do the required assignments but that would lead to failing grades and possibly result in you being kicked out of the university that you are in. When in college the best thing you can do is keep a productive, and positive attitude. Once you start letting procrastination take over your daily schedule you will just get more and more backed up overtime. You should always use time management skills to help you get through college. Do an hour worth of work than take maybe a fifteen or thirty minute break in between than get right back to working. Another way to allow you to focus would be taking adderall. Adderall is a drug prescribed to people who have a hard time focusing in class. Adderall is one of the most commonly used study drugs used by college students. A study done by USAToday found that at least one-third of college students have participated in the consumption of Adderall during tests, or when writing papers.
Success In The Form Of Knowledge
To conclude this grassroots writing research journal, it basically comes down to one thing. Do not procrastinate. Get what you need to done and do it on time. Procrastination only leads to more stress in your life that you probably do not need. That stress is what leads to the outbreaks of violent, non intentional outbreaks. As long as you follow the steps previously listed on what you can do to not procrastinate as heavily than you should be fine. The method that I have found the most useful is to do little bits of the project at a time and continuosly work on it throughout the week. If it gets to the point to where you are trying to really concentrate on a paper or project, just take a breather. Sit back, relax, and control your thoughts to than you can write an even better paper than the one you had planned out in your head. If you use that strategy, I would also recommend playing video games to help you take your mind off the thing you are trying to do. I mean, in the end it does help your eyesight, mental health, and attentiveness.
Works Cited
Guarini, Drew. “9 Ways Video Games Can Actually Be Good For You.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Nov. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/video-games-good-for-us_n_4164723.html.
Scutti, Susan. “Do Video Games Lead to Violence?” CNN, Cable News Network, 26 July 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html.
“22 Charts & Graphs on Video Games & Youth Violence.” Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?, 18 Feb. 2010, videogames.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003627.
Kaplan, Michael. “Why Violent Video Games Are Good for Kids.” New York Post, New York Post, 19 Dec. 2016, nypost.com/2016/12/19/why-violent-video-games-are-good-for-kids/.
Survey. “Gamers Using Microphones.” Statista, 1 Jan. 2016, www.statista.com/statistics/265037/active-steam-gamers-by-microphone-use/.
Tanner, Author. “Think Video Games Make Kids Antisocial? Think Again.” Tanner Helland (Dot) Com, 4 Apr. 2016, www.tannerhelland.com/126/video-games-antisocial/.
Warrell, Margie. “Why You Procrastinate, and How to Stop It. Now.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 26 Mar. 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2013/03/25/why-you-procrastinate-and-how-to-stop-it-now/#70b49c571837.
Brennan, Collin, and Christopher Newport University. “Popping Pills: Examining the Use of ‘Study Drugs’ during Finals.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 16 Dec. 2015, college.usatoday.com/2015/12/16/popping-pills-examining-the-use-of-study-drugs-during-fnals/.
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