Its quite hard to put Gaming in a positive light in recent months and the media isn’t helping. There has been a surge of doctors looking to cure “Video Game Addiction” now that it has become an official mental illness ( https://www.livescience.com/65580-video-game-addiction-mental-health-disorder.html )
Investigating how to cure Gamers with things like shock therapy (https://youtu.be/CCBSXFV8wAQ) citing that its a terrible illness in need of drastic methods.
And most recently, video games are being blamed for making people more violent and the cause of the mass shootings in America ( https://www.gamespot.com/articles/trump-blames-video-games-for-mass-shootings-indust/1100-6468929/ ). Despite there being no conclusive evidence of this, in fact, data seems to show signs that other nations don’t have this correlation (https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/369966/no-video-games-are-not-a-factor-in-mass-shootings)
But in spite of all this, Gaming has been a positive outlet in many peoples lives. I know personally of friends who used Gaming to cope with the loss of a loved one, a nasty breakup, a terrible job, or merely a bad day.
Gaming wasn’t the cure for these things, but it allowed them an outlet while those mental wounds healed. It allowed for something fun in their lives during a dark time, and it allowed them to vent in a safe way where they weren’t harming themselves or others.
Gaming is indeed a form of escapism that allows us to unplug from our dark world and into a brighter one or one that they feel they have more control. Video games enable us to refresh their mind and build back a mental resolve to come back to reality more composed than when we first entered.
How has Gaming affected you? Has it been negative or positive?