With all the recent advances in technology, some parents are feeling left behind the giant wave of future crashing through their homes. That, or they just don’t like “those new thingamajigs.” Unfortunately, the way they express their discomfort is by not letting their kids be exposed to the technology. I don’t know about everyone, but the “I’m not letting you play those video-things because you’ll never leave the house again” trick is getting a little tired. News flash: Video games can be good if you don’t just assume that they’re bad.
It gets on my nerves when people restrict their kids from playing perfectly reasonable video games because they don't like the idea themselves. I can see why they might not want to pay the money for the games; that’s not my business. However, there are a lot of people who don’t approve of video games because they simply haven’t played any. Parents have to understand that if they have been a good parent and their child has reached a certain age, the kid probably wouldn’t see the incentive to go crash a car after playing a racing game, nor would they “jump off of a building and expect to lose ten HP (health),” says one student from the Cambridge Friends School. Shooting games, generally assumed to be among the worst kinds of video games in existence, often don’t actually involve killing people, but killing zombies or aliens that don’t actually exist.
In my experience, the teens I know who are restricted from playing shooting games are the ones who are most interested in them. Not to mention that video games are far better than television kids might be watching otherwise in that the games are interactive and require skill and problem-solving to complete.

There are a lot of people who work very hard and spend years making these games, sometimes all of it only made by two or three people, and it just seems rude to me for someone to instantly say that the people made the game to make a ton of money. In reality, video games can have good effects on people, so the people making them deserve some credit. Recently in school, one of my classmates was challenged by our teacher to play a horror-genre video game at night to prove that he could do it. He then went up to his attic, played the game, and was terrified. But he did it, proving that the challenge of video games can help self-esteem. This is only one way that someone could be challenged to make the most of video games in a positive way, and it proves that these games can challenge people to leave their comfort zone.
Obviously, you shouldn’t be constantly playing video games. I'm not arguing that teens should. Parents need to understand what I’ve talked about here. “Those video-things” aren’t as bad as they are thought to be. There are good things about them, and there are good things people can achieve with them, so why don’t those parents let up on them?