Today, many children spend a lot of time playing computer games and little time on sports. What are the reasons for this and is it a positive or negative development?
Recent decades have witnessed a shift in children’s hobbies as the amount of time squandered on playing computer games is ever-increasing, while the popularity of sports is declining. From my perspective, this phenomenon, which I perceive to be negative, could be attributed to two primary factors.
The main reasons for this change are likely related to the substantial development of the gaming industry and the lack of parental involvement. In terms of the former, gaming has become ubiquitous since many games design companies start to adopt a variety of marketing gimmicks such as celebrity endorsement. Obviously, children tend to be easily swayed by this kind of advertising, and decide to play computer games instead of taking up sports. Furthermore, the majority of parents these days have to deal with a heavy workload in order to keep pace with the accelerated growth of society, which results in less quality time with their offspring. Not being under the supervision of parents, children might become too immersed in playing games.
This development implies certain dangers to children in terms of both physical and mental health. Undoubtedly, spending long hours playing games will lead to a sedentary lifestyle. As a result, players would face several risks of obesity or eye-related diseases such as blurry vision or shortsightedness. Conversely, doing sports improves blood circulation, which helps people to stay healthy and increase physical strength. Another drawback is the children are likely to have poor communicating or teamwork skills as they lack interactions with people surrounding them. In the worst case, this would lead to mental illnesses involving depression or autism.
In conclusion, the more children are engrossed in computer games, the more health problems they have to cope with; thus, I consider this is a negative trend.
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