To game or not to game...

With the extreme popularization of social media and networking sites, people of our generation are becoming lonely and disconnected from society. Media allows for the creation and exchange of user-generated content, and in this class we studied the effects of social media and explored the consequences it is having on our daily interactions and relationships. The absurd amount of time spent on social media has really impacted the way people interact in public and the overall satisfaction they have in their relationships. The rewarding feeling people have with hundreds of Facebook friends or Twitter followers has surprisingly been recognized as harmful. But social networking sites are not the only daily, time consuming stimuli we take part in, the gaming industry has also become more popular among our generation and is being publicized more and more as researchers find positive outcomes from gaming. Today in class we read and watched a TED talk on Jane McGonigal, a videogame designer and advocate for gaming. She believes that gaming can be applied to real-world problems and could be used to stop climate change. McGonigal’s goal is to create a 1,000-year-long-game played by every single person on the planet.  To me this is a dangerous approach to save our planet because the nature of gaming is so time consuming, it is too risky to encourage kids to sit in front of a screen all day, avoiding real life interaction and experiences. Even if gaming could effectively banish climate change, I don’t believe it is a good idea to urge more media intake than there already is. Media has been linked to loneliness and weak bonds and lack of social integration could increase the isolation kids develop due to media. When people are constantly interacting over media their relationships are built through their fingertips and technology rather than their heats and face-to-face interaction. I think this could have a very harmful outcome in the future of our planet’s incumbents.