Why do we think that video games are a good educational and healthy source of entertainment for children? Nowadays, video games have become one of the most common methods for entertainment for various ages, especially children. According to the NBD Group, “91 percent of U.S. children ages 2-17 play video games (64 million)” (Van Camp). This study shows how popular playing video games is among children. Most parents think that video games are a bad source of entertainment for children. However, video games are used not only for entertainment, but also for educational purposes, so they are now considered one of the most important ways for investing children’s leisure time correctly. Matt Wunderle, who is a seventh-grade social studies teacher, uses the video games Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings in a world history class as a method of delivering content to students (Maguth et al., 2015). So, console games have multiple types of usage. Video games are a good educational and healthy source of entertainment for children because they help build education, give children leadership qualities, and are safe compared to physical sports. 

According to Richard Stanton, “The first video games can be attributed to two key people: William Higinbotham and Steve Russel,” (4). Higinbotham, who was working for the Department of Energy in the United States, invented the first video game in 1958 (Stanton 4). The game that Higinbotham designed was a Tennis for Two game. After that, Higinbotham gave his design of the game to Robert V. Dvorak, a technical specialist, to assemble the game (Stanton 4). In 1962, Steve Russell, who was a student at MIT, invented a game for two players called Spacewar (Stanton 5). This game was hugely successful and spread all over colleges in the United States. Even though Tennis for Two and Spacewar were the first two amazing invented games, they still had a limited group of people who were playing them, especially adults who were in college, so children hadn’t started playing yet. According to Stanton, “During the early 1970s, two key people, Ralph Baer and Nolan Bushnell, would bring video games into the home and the arcades for the masses to enjoy,” (5). So, although Higinbotham and Russel technically invented the first games, Baer and Bushnell invented video games near to what we know it today.

According to Stanton, “Atari was an important player, but was soon joined by other companies with a mark to make of their own,” (8). So, Stanton shows how the games emerged, showing how corporate empires and technological and conceptual developments shaped how games are experienced in all their dazzling variety. Also, he mentions Atari’s games as an example of how the games emerged and developed by other companies. Moreover, Stanton points out that “the first notable educational game was Oregon Trail, originally designed in 1971 for teletype machines at Carleton College,” (35). Also, other notable educational games that were invented after the first game were the Carmen Sandiego series and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. 

Being a producer is completely different than being a consumer. A lot of talk is going on about video games and how they consume the kids’ time and energy. What about when kids are the ones who invent the video game? According to Steven L. Kent, one of the very popular companies that invents video games, Nintendo, held a competition called “Invent the Ultimate Video Game,” (362). The idea of this competition was that kids had to come up with their own ideas, and the company would turn their ideas into actual games. Out of 10,000 kids, a fifteen-year-old Jeffrey Scott won the competition and received a prize of $3000 (Kent 362). This type of engaging competition definitely increases kids’ creativity and inventing skills. That is what the video game companies should provide to the kids instead of some types of games that might consume kids’ energy and time.

One of the most crucial factors for a good source of entertainment for children is that it helps build education. There are a bunch of video games that are designed to develop a child’s skills, such as Myst, Forza Motorsport 4, and Heavy Rain. According to the American School Board Journal, “Examples of education video games include ‘Discover Babylon,’ which incorporates artifacts from exhibits at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore and transports the player to a virtual reality of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), and ‘Immune Attack,’ which teaches human immunology for ninth-grade to college-level students” ("Play Video Games; They're Educational"). This journal mentions an example of a video game Discover Babylon to show how important video games are to be used on education for children, especially to teach them human immunology.

In fact, video games improve many skills in a child, such as reading and writing skills. Basically, almost all the video games require reading skills to be able to play that game as it is supposed to be played. So, video games merge two things, education and entertainment, so that children will not feel as bored as if they are only studying. The study which was done in Saudi Arabia to promote Saudi kids' English vocabulary showed that the children who were taught English vocabulary by using video games were much more successful in learning the new English words compared to those who were taught English vocabulary by using the traditional method (Alshaiji, 2015). Therefore, this study proves that using video games as a teaching tool in the classroom has positive effects on children’s comprehension. 

Even though not all console games are specifically designed for educational purposes, they do help develop thinking skills for children. According to James Robers, “Some of the most positive effects that video games have on children are development of essential skills including resource management, multitasking, and on-the-spot thinking. They require a child to develop and use hand-eye coordination, spatial sense, and math skills” (241). Robers assures that video games help to develop thinking skills, which increase the creativity of children and lead them to gain good behaviors. According to a study done by researchers at Michigan State University, both violent and interpersonal video games promote a level of creativity among children (Herbert, 2011). Also, the same study found that video games lead children to improve their visual and spatial skills (Herbert, 2011). Therefore, some console games keep a child’s mind active, especially the games that require some kind of sorting pictures or figures such as Baku Baku Animal and Wordtris. Also, console games that involve solving puzzles and math skills are a good source for increasing thinking skills for children. According to recent research, playing prosocial video games raises positive impacts, good behaviors, and sociable thinking of children (Saleem et al., 2012). Therefore, this study assures that video games are very useful for improving children’s thinking skills. In some video games, the player is required to react quickly to beat a specific level and advance to the other level, which is more difficult than the previous one. These kinds of video games develop on-the-spot thinking skills. Therefore, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that video games have a beneficial effect on education for children.

       Yet another important reason that makes a video game a good source of entertainment for children is that it gives them leadership qualities. One major component of leadership is strong problem-solving skills, which is a quality that children gain from video games. For example, in Lego video games, the player is required to solve specific puzzles in order to get promoted to the next level and the further the player goes, the harder it gets. Therefore, this kind of console game teaches children that there is a solution for every problem they encounter, not only in video games, but also in life. According to Chuang Tsung-Yen and Chen Wei-Fan’s experimental study, “Computer-based video game playing not only can improve participants’ fact differentiation/recall processes, but also promotes problem-solving skills by recognizing multiple solutions for problems,” (2009). Therefore, this study assures how useful video games are for increasing problem-solving skills for children. Also, according to Douglas A. Gentile, “The complexity of many games means that they have the potential to promote complex problem-solving strategies,” (2011). Gentile confirms the idea that the more complex the game is the more problem-solving skills the player gets. So, video games help promote problem-solving skills for children.

The other important leadership quality that children acquire from playing console games is teamwork and collaboration. Most of video games are played as a team, so in these games, children learn how important it is to cooperate with their teammates to achieve their goal successfully. For example, in the game Luigi’s Mansion, players must collaborate and watch each other’s backs, so that they would beat the ghost successfully. Also, in the game Sweet Day, which is played by four players, players must work together as a team to eat a set number of gumball candies that can only be shaken from the trees, which means it requires the players to cooperate and work together to achieve that goal, so they either win or lose as a team. According to a study done by researchers from the University of Sussex and Ludwig Maximilians University, “…Participants were more likely to help stop a harassment situation after playing a game that involved collaboration” (Welton). Therefore, this study confirms the positive effect that children get from playing video games, especially the ones that require collaboration between players.

Another essential leadership quality that children obtain from playing video games is learning to take responsibilities and to make decisions, which every leader should have. For example, in Rollercoaster Tycoon, the players build and customize their own roller coaster. Also, in this game, the player has a group of players that one should be responsible for helping them. So, this kind of game helps children make decisions and take responsibilities for what they have done. Also, making decisions teaches children a lesson about the ability of making appropriate decisions for their problems either in life or in video games. Another example of a video game that teaches children to be responsible is Civilization, which allows players to build and develop their own empire from the ancient era until the near future times. Therefore, video games teach children to take responsibilities and to make appropriate decisions.

The last leadership quality that children get from playing console games is being social and interactive. This is especially taught in the video games that are played by multiple players such as Team Fortress 2 and Rocket League. These kinds of games improve communication skills for children. According to Granic et al, “… gamers are rapidly learning social skills and prosocial behavior that might generalize to their peer and family relations outside the gaming environment,” (qtd. in Gentile et al., 2009). Granic develops the idea that video games make players more interactive not only with their peers, but also with their family. Also, according to Viviane Kovess-Masfety, “A Japanese study of kindergarten children found that those who played video games had more friends and were more willing to talk to others” (Kovess-Masfety el al., 2016). So, this Japanese study assures the idea that video games help children be socially interactive. All of the above leadership qualities, which children gain as a result of playing video games, indicate that video games are a good educational source of entertainment.

       The last essential factor for making video games a good healthy source of entertainment for children is that they are safe compared to physical sports. Video games tend to be safer than other physical activities and sports. According to the National Safe Kids Campaign and the American Academy of Pediatrics, “More than 3.5 million children ages 14 and younger get hurt annually playing sports or participating in recreational activities” (“Sports Injury Statistics”). This statistic indicates how dangerous playing sports is for children. They go on to say that “More than 775,000 children, ages 14 and younger, are treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. Most of the injuries occurred as a result of falls, being struck by an object, collisions, and overexertion during unorganized or informal sports activities” (“Sports Injury Statistics”). Therefore, this statistic shows that most of these injuries, which children have from playing physical sports and activities, are serious, risky, and harmful. 

On the other hand, video games are less dangerous, and they cause less injuries for children. Video game injuries usually result as a joint pain in players’ hands and muscle aches. According to David Schipper, “Each hour of daily video game use increased the likelihood of experiencing joint pain by 50 percent” (2009). Depending on what Schipper says, video game injuries are not as serious to be worried about in comparison to the other sports injuries. Therefore, children can easily avoid these kinds of injuries by simply taking breaks or reducing the number of hours they are playing. The statistics assure that video games are safer than other activities and sports. Also, according to Daphne Bavelier, who is a brain scientist, gamers have a better vision than those who do not play video games because they can differentiate between shades of grey (Bavelier, 2012). Therefore, video games are now enhanced to solve some health problems such as improving patients with poor vision, which means that console games are a good healthy source of entertainment for children.

Speaking of video games as a good educational and healthy source of entertainment for children takes different points of view. Even though some people believe that video games are a harmful source of entertainment for children, video games are a good educational and healthy source of entertainment for children because they help build education, give children leadership qualities, and are safe. So, video games play a significant role in children’s lives.
