Castronova argues that economic activity, political, social, and cultural activity will migrate to the virtual world. Well, I strongly hope that virtual worlds will forever lack the social, cultural, and educational aspects of reality. When someone spends hours and hours inside playing online games, I question whether that person is experiencing personal growth, socially, culturally, and intellectually. I understand that when you immerse yourself in massive multiplayer online role-playing games, you are interacting with other human beings. However, nothing compares to real human interaction, face-to-face conversation. Face-to-face interaction contributes to human personal growth.
Virtual worlds are not real or genuine.
- You will not develop cognitive skills or critical thinking in a MMORPG.
- There is no real human interaction. You will fail to develop proper social skills.
- You will not learn about the environment and nature in the virtual world.
- This world lacks cultural immersion.
In the future, I fear that the crucial experiences that foster positive childhood development will become obsolete. When I think of my childhood, I remember family game nights (playing monopoly or apples to apples, NOT online games), traveling to foreign countries, playing outside on the swing set with my neighborhood friends, learning how to share with others, reading books, playing dress-up, and spending quality time with my family and friends. I never played video games or spent time on the computer. I believe that my childhood development would have been severely altered or non-existent if it had consisted of only playing online games.
Fear without proof will not convince me or many other researchers. In fact, several studies show that games as training tools do indeed foster better critical thinking skills. They are not necessarily immersive, online-all-the-time games, but if the Department of Defense and several university studies show the utility of some sorts of virtual worlds, who are we to argue?
ReplyDeleteNow I'm more worried, for your age cohort, about the 100 texts sent and received per day and the endless hours socializing in the virtual space called Facebook. Just because one thinks one "knows" those 100 friends does not mean they are as good as face-to-face friends or that social networking fosters "positive social, cultural, and intellectual development in a traditional sense."
So paint me as skeptical of the skeptics about virtual worlds. I no more want us to "migrate" than you do, but virtual worlds can accomplish educational and cognitive tasks hard to simulate in real life, and they can provide escapist fare, in moderation.
We just have to learn what is "not moderate" first, as with drinking or other potentially dangerous activities.