Video Games and the Internet

Video Games and the Internet

I loved Elder Bednar’s fireside for two reasons: one, he said a lot of things that I’ve been saying for a while, especially in the last few weeks, and two, he also said several things that I NEEDED to hear.

First off: video games = evil.

If one could compare the societal prevalence of an addiction—that is to say how much society thinks of it as a damaging addiction—with the damage of an addiction, you get an interesting correlation. It seems that some of the least damaging addictions are widely known to be damaging in the first place, whereas more damaging addictions, tend to be less known as damaging addictions.

I’ll need examples to explain. WARNING—in this essay I’m using the word “prevalence” to mean that society in general regards a particular addiction as a dangerous addiction.

Smoking is probably the most prevalent addiction. Everybody knows that smoking is bad for your health and that its highly addictive. Prevalence is high. However, smoking is comparatively harmless. You will most likely die from it, although that death is far away. It will shave off years from your life. You also smell, and are hopelessly addicted to it—well not hopelessly, nothing’s hopeless, but you understand. All this makes it not very likely that you’ll get sucked into smoking. You know its bad. If you smoke, you knowingly damage your body.

Pornography/Masturbation is not very prevalent. Most people regard it as harmless, or a rite of passage, or a guy thing. Society in general thinks it perfectly harmless. They are very wrong though! Despite the low prevalence, damage is very high. It ruins your actual sexual experiences, it demeans the value you place on whatever gender you may be looking at, it perverts the mind, and most importantly it breaks up families. This makes it very dangerous. You are very likely to get roped into pornography/masturbation, thinking it harmless, and hardcore mess up your life. I’m sure many people reading this have this challenge.

The addiction I really want to talk about is gaming.

Prevalence is at an all-time low for this addiction. Everybody LOVES video games. Most people, especially boys, play them, and have played them since they were children. Almost everybody regards video games as a form of harmless entertainment, that is potentially educational. The only warning comes from Nintendo which started having a warning against playing too hard, pushing the buttons too hard can hurt your thumbs and lead to some joint disease.

Damage levels are through the roof on gaming, though. Gaming is highly addictive for nearly everybody. It takes a good deal of self control to stop. Even then, you wish you were still playing them and you think about them in other environments until you return to the game. Games are a huge time-waster. A person can spend hours upon hours playing video games, often not eating, sleeping, getting a job, paying attention to family members, doing schoolwork, talking to girlfriends, or any friends, etc. In other words, gamers will play games and nothing else until they are done—but they are never done.

Not only do video games waste time, but the content is often questionable. Video games are violent, more than half the time, and are occasionally sexual in some form. Video games therefore demean the value of human life. Also, many video games interact with other “real” people. People build intense relationships with people they have never met in the real world. This makes actual real-life people mean less to them. Video games take emotions in these cases. Often a person’s highlight of the week comes from a video gaming, or other computer experience, as Elder Bednar mentioned.

Also, video games tend to give a more scientific, or formulaic worldview. If x, then y. I hear all the time from heavy gamers something like this: “I don’t understand. I did blank and so and so didn’t blank. I can’t figure it out.” In video games a certain something will happen that has a definite cause. Also, one can go back, respawn, or restart to the same environment as before. This is not real. If you mess up, things will change. You cannot go back to something and have it be the same. There are so many different and complex consequences and conditions related to cause and effect relationships. Many subtleties can change the outcome of an event. This truth is sometimes lost to heavy gamers, whose view of reality slowly but surely disintegrates.

Damage from video game addiction can include, but is not limited to, losing your girlfriend/wife, losing your job, falling behind in school, losing faith in humanity, having a cynical, or comedic view of death, or loss of human life, complacency regarding violent actions, or visuals like gore, blood, and physical mutilation as well as violence, formulaic views of the world, start-over attitudes, spiritual decline, and misplaced emotions—not to mention over a dozen people have died playing video games.

Because of all this, I can almost guarantee that whoever is reading this has not only played a video game before, but hasn’t been able to stop before, or has wasted countless hours on video games, or computer games. The difference? Even I have wasted a lot of time on video games. I have missed school papers, ignored social obligations, including a girlfriend, so that I can play more video games—and I’ve always thought video games were bad. It is almost 100% likely that you have been influenced by video games in your life, therefore danger for this addiction is the highest of any other addiction I can think of. People think they’re harmless, but they’re not.

That is why I was so glad to hear somebody important, unlike me, to say some of these things. Elder Bednar is truly inspired of the Lord. When it comes from him, it comes from God.

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window

--temptation, that is.

As I looked at the various buildings around campus, I realized how many people I didn't have time to say goodbye to. I also realized this: Rexburg has invariably become my home.

As I left my apartment, I was surprised at how easy it was to carry all my things. It was much colder than I expected as I walked the 2 or so blocks to the bus stop. I could see frost on the windows of every car as I walked by them in my shorts and T-Shirt.

I wished that I could be anywhere else—in any other situation than the one I was in. Going to the bus stop wasn’t a walk of grief, perhaps for some family emergency. It wasn’t a walk of pleasure, perhaps for vacation. No, this was a walk of shame, failure. A walk of guilt. I turned my back on everything Rexburg had to offer with that fateful decision only two nights before.

I knew I had messed up worse than ever before this time. I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. First, I talked to one of my sisters. Then I talked to a good friend who suggested that I talk to my stake president. I emailed my stake president who promptly emailed me back saying I could meet with him. That’s when I found out I’d have to leave—soon. Suddenly things started happening so fast. Before I had time to process, I was talking bus tickets, plane tickets, boxes, the DI, packing…etc.

That is why I was walking to the bus stop at 1:45 am. I’d spent the last few hours saying my goodbyes. When it was too late, I tried to finish my library book—80 pages left in a Michael Crichton thriller. One of many things I never got to finish in Rexburg.

I arrived at the bus stop at 1:48. 12 minutes until the bus arrived. There were two others there waiting—deathly quiet, and cold. We just sat there in the cold. The constant sniffling from the chill helped to cover the tears I knew would come. I had way more stuff than the others. It was clear that I was leaving for good, and not just the weekend, like they were. I took in the early morning. It was so quiet. So peaceful. The cold air made us hyper-alert. Every detail was almost new to me. Memories flooded in, ripe with emotion. Old friends, new friends, random conversations. The most poignant emotion was familiarity. I knew this place—my home. I got myself so abruptly ejected from the best place I had ever known.

Finally the bus came. We loaded our stuff in and got going. As soon as the lights were off, the tears came. Slowly at first, then it became difficult to breathe. We pulled into the other Rexburg stop after just half a minute. I had to dry my tears quickly. I figured if anybody asked me what was wrong, I’d tell them I was going to a funeral, only nobody had physically died, I was grieving my spiritual death.

Its so weird to think that 7 months ago I went to the temple twice and had my most spiritual experience there. As I looked back at it a thought came to me: I’ll go back again someday. The atonement is very powerful. I can get over this. The atonement can help us get over anything, sin or otherwise. It might be a while, but it is very possible. I will go into the Rexburg temple again. Then, I leaned back and found sleep.