The Disadvantages of Online Gaming Essay Example

In the modern world of technological advancements, our recreational time is shifting from outdoor to online activities. These online recreational activities, known chiefly as online gaming, are played through gaming consoles, personal computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices. Online games are usually single-player games played by one person; or multiplayer games, which allow multiple players to play and interact online in the same environment. Online gaming can be enjoyable at times and has some benefits and advantages. However, there are also significant disadvantages, such as physical issues, financial challenges, and mental problems. However, the disadvantages of online gaming outweigh the benefits.

First and foremost, online gaming leads to a variety of health issues. Take one, for example, eyesight issues. When playing online games for several hours, your vision will become blurry and unfocused. As you focus on something farther away, your sight will gradually return to normal. These sorts of eyesight issues are usually minor, but repeatedly having blurry visions and eye soreness would be the long-term effects of online gaming. Over months or years, those frequent episodes of blurry vision may lead to a need for glasses or contacts. I have experienced significant eyesight problems related to online gaming. My elementary school years were spent playing Roblox and Minecraft, two online games I loved. After school, I would head home, finish my homework, and play both of these games with my friends for hours on end. This went on for several years until my mother noticed I had vision problems one day. Some objects far away seemed fuzzy, and it wasn’t subsiding as it usually did after I played online games. Afterward, I had to wear glasses and later contacts to counter the nearsightedness of eye strain while gaming. Bothering with these things every day takes up time and money to maintain them properly, which disadvantages me every morning and evening. However, this is only one example of a health issue arising from online gaming that disadvantages players, with other afflictions such as back pain, migraines, and cardiovascular diseases affecting online gamers and disadvantageing them for many years to come. As terrible as those obvious disadvantages of gaming sound, there are other significant disadvantages from gaming to the human body that aren't as well known.

Another disadvantage to online gaming, albeit uncommon, is the development of mental, especially anger issues. This usually becomes a problem after you have logged many hours on online games. After gaining experience at a game, you may not understand why some players do the things they do. New, inexperienced players won't know how to play than someone who has a lot of experience in an online game. Most of these online games involve teamwork, so when someone isn't playing their best like other people, the whole team's score in the game may go down. People tend to get upset over these things, and the whole situation escalates from there. One example of those raging gamers is my friend. He liked playing World of Warcraft and Clash Royale, and after a while, he became furious at anything that went wrong. Most of his anger was directed at other online players in the game. My friend insulted players in-game chats, sending hateful messages when things did not go his way. This angry mindset also followed him into the real world, and he became known as the “crazy gamer kid” at school. Eventually, this friend cleaned up his act and quit gaming entirely, becoming a calmer, better person while doing so. This example of anger in online gaming shows that it tends to ruin the mental state of perfectly good people like my friend. As a result, he and many others became toxic in real life, snapping and raging at any mistake they made. While these anger issues don’t happen to everyone online, they can still become a significant problem for some.

A third disadvantage with online gaming is that your money might start to disappear with the more time you spend gaming. There are two main ways for you to spend a lot of money to play games; add-ons and equipment. Add-ons are cheats in any online game, such as maps, season passes, weapons, skins, that make gaming and interacting with others much more accessible. However, any experienced gamer will tell you that the game developers only use add-ons to generate more money for themselves, making it very difficult to beat games without the assistance of add-ons. If you use the add-ons along with the original version, you will slowly notice that all your hard-earned money is being sucked into the game for a few benefits. The other, more common way for your money to vanish is to spend it on equipment used for gaming, such as controllers, mouses, and keyboards. I usually buy a new mouse for my computer every couple of years to make sure it works properly. I don't replace keyboards as often, but I replace them only when broken. Still, over the past few years, I believe that I have spent over 700 dollars worth of equipment for online gaming purposes. I am providing this example of my gaming expenses to illustrate the complexity of the technology required to play online and the cost of that technology today. Many other online gamers do not have that kind of money that I had for gaming and become impoverished as adults. These gamers often develop health issues, such as depression and sickness, stemming from a lack of money that they had not foreseen. Financial problems are one of the most overlooked yet most severe disadvantages of online gaming.

Playing online games has many disadvantages in general. Even though online gaming reduces stress on the mind and is extremely enjoyable in moderation, it is still regarded as a significant source of mental, physical, and monetary issues if played for a prolonged time. The disadvantages of gaming go far beyond these, with obesity, social breakdowns, migraines, and violent activities being some I did not mention. Considering all of these factors, it is safe to say that the disadvantages of online games outweigh the benefits.