If you could
un-invent something, what would it be? Discuss why, potential repercussions, or
a possible alternative.
Call me
old-fashioned and unrealistic, but I would un-invent video games! So, let me
put in a caveat here…I don’t mean to uninvent game apps that serve a purpose
such as word searches, Sudoku, even match 3 types games and certainly all types
of puzzles and mystery/educational games because they challenge our minds and
keep us sharp. I am referring to the games most kids, teens, and many adults
play now a days, including the war games, the car theft games, etc…I just don’t
see any positive influence from them.
Potential
repercussions would be that all video type games would have to be un-invented
because we have free will, greed, and all different types of people in this
world, so if game apps had been invented first, eventually all the other types
of games would follow. You can’t stop people who have a talent for making games
like they would like to play or they think others would like to play for the
purpose of making money. It’s what drives our world, consumerism.
I don’t
personally like to play video games. I do my match three, word/language
challenge games, etc…and I love to play actual games with dominos, cards, and
so forth, but that usually requires a group of people, so you spend quality
time together playing. Most of the video games my children want to play and
want me to buy for them are single player games. They are sitting in front of a TV or portable
video game device for hours a day (if you let them), often all by themselves,
filling their heads with war, violence, and imaginary scenarios that provide
all kinds of lights, action, and entertainment (and often make them rich and
famous believing they really did play like Michael Jordan and make it to the
NBA championships), but teach them nothing about the real world or the
environment right outside their doors or in their back yards. My boys get so excited to tell me all about
their achievements in the soccer or football VIDEO game they played, and the
kindergarteners I work around all week tell me elaborate stories about what
level they got to in the latest game their parents bought them over the
weekend.
The possible
alternatives are to go back to what was already invented in terms of games, set
of Uno cards, dominos, Frisbees, basketballs, bikes, and hiking. How about that for entertainment? You can
actually increase your mental skills for strategy, math, social and physical
skills, and spark creativity through interaction with nature, the outside
world, your friends and family much more by choosing these activities than by
playing video games and watching TV all day long. The funny thing about me is that the only video
game (besides the match 3 apps, etc…that I occasionally play on my Kindle) I
ever really enjoyed and have gotten into were ones fashioned after board
games. My husband bought us a “Planet
Earth” computer game once that we all had to play together and figure out as we
went (and put puzzle pieces together in an actual world puzzle), and we were
learning facts about the earth too. I
also played an inexpensive Wii “cooking” game that had you moving around a
digital game board to different spots where you would either win coins, lose
coins, or have to participate in a cooking challenge with the other
players. Silly, huh? But my son and I
always had fun playing it together.
Isn’t that
what it should be all about…quality time together…don’t we all spend enough
time at work and “working” around the house ignoring each other. I’d rather take the time that my children
have already spent playing video games back, drive an hour and ½ along the
coast highway to hike a mile up to an awesome waterfall and a mile back (like
we did today), then enjoy the views and company in the car on the way back home
than sit downstairs in my recliner watching TV while my son is upstairs playing
video games for those same hours. Too
much time is spent in those pursuits already, so if video games and TV didn’t
exist at all, maybe we’d all spend more time with each other without having to
set aside a family day or time to be together.
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