I put this in the family section because it's an at-home issue. More and more video games are being produced every day in the world. Games that can help you learn, games to keep you entertained, and games that bring people together. I remember when I was younger my mom and dad wouldn't let me get a Gameboy or Nintendo no matter how much I begged. I didn't understand why, then my aunt got me a gameboy and The Legend of Zelda. My mom and dad were actually surprised by the outcome, instead of me bothering them to do stuff all the time I would go and play my gameboy. They seemed to be ok with it until I got other games, then my gaming pretty much consumed my life. My parents are good people, they raised me right, but my gaming got a little out of hand. About to the point of where I would come home from school and play until I fell asleep, it was getting to be an issue as my grades were going down. It still is somewhat of an issue, but I'm slowly learning to do other things.

I am an only child, so with no siblings my communication and social skills are lacking (even now that I'm grown and out on my own). This is where I feel gaming has helped me the most. Although I rarely talk to people and I don't really leave the apartment unless I'm going to work or it's a medical emergency, through gaming I have learned to communicate MUCH more than I would if I had just sat around and bothered mom and dad all day. I also believe gaming had helped my hand-eye coordination to teach myself to play guitar. I've been playing for 6 years now, self-taught, and I believe I'm on par with most people who have been playing as long as I have.

I believe the reasoning behind not letting a child play a video game is that it will do to them what it did to me, consume the child's life. But! What most parents don't realize is that there are PLENTY of educational video games out there that a child can really use to learn outside of the classroom. Things like math and reading, the stuff you can't really study outside without someone being there to help. With the introduction of a.i. in learning games the parents don't even have to be there to guide the children through their mistakes, the computer does it for them. That might sound awful and lead you to believe computers are replacing parents in the education process, but sometimes a computer can catch even what a parent can miss or doesn't know about. So before you tell your kids they can't have the xbox or ps2 because of games like grand theft auto and halo, think about what they could be missing out on.