Some people view video games as a waste of time and cannot be of any more benefit to people besides entertainment. While this argument has been going on for a long time, I would like to bring to light how important video games are to modern children. People not born in this generation will understandably have a hard time empathizing or even sympathizing with how important video games are for some children. It may not always seem important and can sometimes seem arbitrary and unhealthy for children, but there are certain aspects of video games that benefit some children immensely.

Many parents of this generation have a hard time relating to kids when they sit in their rooms for hours, seemingly doing nothing. However, playing video games online can actually a major part of some kids childhood. A lot of these games are expansive sci-fi action games and others are enormous worlds filled with dragons and wizards. Often times these interests are not ones shared among what societal standards would consider as normal and commonplace. Advertisements show that kids should be interested in sports, Sunday morning cartoons and playing outside with their friends. While these things are also obviously beneficial to children and their well-being, not every child wants to do these things. Expressing these interests deemed as “nerdy” in a real life scenario is daunting and hard to do since not all people have a common mindset of these interests. It is not odd for some of these kids to be bullied and called weird for what they are wholeheartedly enticed by.

Here is where video games come into the conversation. These fears of being unaccepted because of one's interest in nerd culture, some kids develop social problems. Not wanting to express what they want to do because they believe that they are weird and do not belong. Expressing these interests can be intimidating and video games bring people together that want to indulge in their true interests. On a personal level, I had this problem as a child and playing games such as Runescape and World of Warcraft was a way to feel accepted and develop social skills. Being twenty, my generation grew up in a time where massive multiplayer online games were hot and popular. These are the perfect online environments to see how many people throughout the world are interested in these aspects that are called nerdy.

Recently, nerdy culture has been more popularized and normalized throughout the world. Comic-con is an enormous and known event and video games have become an integrated part of our culture. Many commercials and advertisements are for video games such as Call of Duty and Dark Souls. Even further than this, competitive gaming has become more popular and events can develop prize pools that can exceed $2 million. Some people still have a hard time justifying video games for children and try to link them to them developing negative traits. However, I have found them crucial to me developing social skills and I am positive many people my age have had the same experience.