Another Perspective on Video Games

A friend recently shared the following excerpt from “Everything Bad Is Good For You” by Steven Johnson. It is a spoof on articles decrying video games, based on a fantasy that video games came before reading.

“Reading books chronically under stimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of game playing – which engages the child in a vivid, three dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements – books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

“Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new “libraries” that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

“Many children enjoy reading books, of course, and no doubt some of the flights of fancy conveyed by reading have their escapist merits. But for a sizeable percentage of the population, books are downright discriminatory. The reading craze of recent years cruelly taunts the 10 million Americans who suffer from dyslexia – a condition that didn’t even exist as a condition until printed text came along to stigmatize its sufferers.

“But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can’t control their narratives in any fashion – you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person?

But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning “follow the plot” instead of learning to lead.”

I love this spoof on reading! Brilliant! Cultural criticism of video games is over-rated and is not as harmful as many “adults” fear, often because it’s new and appeals to a new generation who require new skills and ways of being.

Perhaps it is not ‘either-or’ but ‘both-and’ with value from both reading and video games. I always love the quote from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran where he talks about children:

“You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

May we as adults create the lives that are ours to live and allow children the freedom and respect to create the lives that are theirs to live, without with perpetual doom-saying about the next younger generation.

The operative word here is “trust.”