Bayit's Addiction

 

                        For a while, a debate over the negative effects on children of exposure of video game and movie violence has been ongoing. One side argues that violent media makes children more violent, teaches them bad habits, and gives them amoral attitudes. This debate started as an out of proportion, one-sided argument with very little evidence for the extreme claims. Since then, the debate has simmered down and become more logical with theories and studies used to back up both sides. Over time, new and different approaches to the issue have been taken with more branches of the debate. One of these lesser-involved branches is not whether child-oriented media has an effect an children or not, but rather what that effect is. Most external stimuli, including media, has some kind of effect on the mind. This debate determines whether or not those effects on the mind are good or bad. Because of the nature of this debate, in order to find an answer one must narrow research down to a single example of media. Each piece of media will have a different effect on children simply because not every title is the same. One of these specific franchises that the debate is over is Pokemon. In late 2016, The Pokemon Company released a new set of video ganes and a trailer for the next season of their TV show. In both of these engaging titles, children experience an abstract world full of monsters from the point of view of iconic characters such as Pokemon Trainers Ash and Sun.

What started as Nintendo’s Pokemon franchise has been around since 1996. The company originally released a pair of video games on the handheld GameBoy Color, and has since become one of the most successful multi-modal franchises of the world. The Pokemon Company has a long series of video games that spans seven generations now, with several spin-off series of video games along with an ongoing TV show, trading card game, several manga series, mobile phone apps, and more. The success of the franchise has managed to make the main series Pokemon video games the second most popular video game franchise of all time, being the second most sold video game series of all time (Bainbridge 1). Today’s children most often engage in the handheld video games and the TV cartoon. Naturally, when there is a franchise that has the potential for this much influence on the world, one would ask what the impact of it is on its audience. So how does The Pokemon Company, as a whole, change the normal mind of those who become involved in its universe?

While the Pokemon universe is enjoyed by a wide range of ages, the largest parts of the franchise are geared towards children. The universe itself revolves around the collecting, studying, and battling of a variety of animals. These animals circulate the many sides of the company so much that they are just, if not more, recognizable than the main human characters of the series. This main premise that lays the foundation of the Pokemon world also lays the basis of the debate over Pokemon. One side of this specific debate argues that the franchise has a purely negative impact on the minds of children. These people argue that the ‘animal abuse and violence’ is just as bad as in first-person shooter style war video games, and that its teaches children to neglect animals and view them as prizes to be collected (or feared, depending on the context) rather than other living beings. The other side argues that it has a purely positive affect on children. This side’s argument revolves around the moral values and teachings of the entire company, both directly and indirectly. They will argue that the games teach patience and courage and other notable traits, while the cartoon and trading card game teaches similar behaviors such as cooperation and friendship (with humans and animals alike). While the answer does have complexities involving both an ability to both positively and negatively influence children, research shows that Pokemon has much more potential to positively help with the development of a child’s unconscious mind by providing strong creative stimulation, social interactions, and fear and stress reduction.

 

            The Pokemon franchise, both the games (video games and trading card games) and the TV show inspires the development of creative cognition in children. Many child psychologists, such as Professor Julie Carranza at Florida State University, will agree that imagination and play are extremely important to the development of children. Theories such as scaffolding, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Piaget’s stages of development show that not only imagination, but also moral themes to go along with it will encourage the best development and mental health. According to the Professor Carranza, during an interview, “fiction (in general) helps children explore how different choices will affect them by removing limitations of our own world and allow them to think more abstractly” (Carranza), which is a crucial development point for children. Jean Piaget, a famous developmental psychologist, created stages of development that all children must go through. One of said stages is known as the Formal Operational Stage. In this stage, children learn to think abstractly about the world around them. Engaging in fantasy worlds (especially worlds they view from a character’s perspective that is not their own) significantly helps their minds to develop through this stage.

One article by Sorenson focused on how children’s books affect children in both positive and negative ways. It mainly paid attention to three fantasy worlds (Bakugan, Magic Treehouse, and Pokemon) in order to see how they related to the development of the minds of children. They focus on the book series of Pokemon, claiming that “reading [is] an activity that ordinarily helps children to develop imaginative solutions, verbalize rather than act out, and acquire skills in symbolic conceptualization (Sorenson 5).” The authors say this while simultaneously arguing that the Pokemon books are bad for children to read. How, exactly these Pokemon books are so bad, though? To start, they are based in the universe of Pokemon with magic, creation, adventure, and friendship. The authors of the article argue that Pokemon teaches children that ‘battling’ is the only way to have fun, citing how one of the books “[uses] attack seven times and battle five times” (Sorenson 9) throughout the entire book. This particular book, Coal Badge Battle by Tracey West, is about a gym battle that the main character is competing in. If one ignores the fact that attacking and battling are brought up several times in a book during a battle, and goes to see actually how much twelve words is in the context of this book, one will find that these seven mentions of attack and five mentions of battle do not make up even 2% of the total word count. That is not to mention that these gym battles make up merely 71 episodes out of over 955 total episodes (7% of the series)! The rest of the series were about concepts such as building friendships and working hard to accomplish dreams. Pokemon not only teaches strong moral values to children, but also does it in a creative universe that gives children inspiration for imagination while retaining their attention.

 

The Pokemon games, specifically the trading card game and video games, provide a safe, structured place for children to interact with each other. There are places for competition, cooperation, and simply plain conversation. Special types of online battles known as multi-battles allow players to team up with other players in order to compete against other teams in a way that requires teamwork and cooperation. One cannot win without their partner. These special battles allow for players to experience a reality that even non-gamers come across on a day to day basis: competition. As much as the population wants to wipe the world of competition, that will never happen. Society as a whole must learn to accept that there will always be conflict and competition in the world, and learn to make the most of it. One good thing that does come from competition, especially online, is that it “helps you to be able to work as a group or team” (Carranza). Professor Carranza explained that society has many moving pieces, and that everyone has a role to play – a specific role to play. Being assigned specific roles on a team in online video games helps people to understand that phenomena in the real world.

One study about intergroup relations within video game environments describes how intergroups within video games (both cooperative intergroups and competitive intergroups) affects relationships in real life. This study was created by Paul Adachi, Gordon Hodson, and Mark Hoffarth. The importance of this study to the Pokemon franchise lies within how players interact within the Pokemon universe. Players can choose to involve themselves in cooperative trades or multi-battles in which they team up to face opponents. On the flip side, the franchise does revolve around battling. In order to battle, there must be competition. In the study, Adachi and Hodson and Hoffarth suggest that intergroup cooperation reduces bias and discrimination while competition elevates it (Adachi and Hoffarth and Hodson 1). They use sources, such as Sherif’s famous real-life competitive experiment, in order to lay down the evidence for their claim that “intergroup conflict is caused by perceived competition between groups over real and tangible resources” (Adachi and Hoffarth and Hodson 2.1). Since Pokemon creates a place for friendly competition in which players team up to play against each other (instead of a singler-player competition where it is every player for himself), it will only increase prosocial behaviors within groups and outgroups because there is no real and tangible prize for winning a battle.

 

While the majority of the evidence points towards Pokemon being beneficial to child development, some people will still argue that it is not. One of their main arguments stems from the theory of desensitization. The theory is basically describing what happens when one grows accustomed to a specific stimulus, and they react less to said stimulus over time. An example of this would be that when someone first jumps into the unheated neighborhood pool the water feels very cold, but as time goes by they do not feel as cold. This, in theory, works the same way with experiences. People argue that violent video games desensitize the players in a way that makes them jaded to violence in real life.

One study, that someone arguing this point might use for evidence, is an experiment that measured physiological responses to violence after different scenarios. In the study done by Nicholas Carnagey, Craig Anderson, and Brad Bushman, the researchers took two groups of people: one who were exposed to a violent video game before being exposed to a violent video in real life, and one group who went through the exact same treatment except with a non-violent video game instead of a violent one. Heart rate and galvanic skin response were both measured during the violent video. At the end of the experiment, it was found that “playing a violent video game, even for just 20 min, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence” (Carnagey and Anderson and Bushman). The evidence for this is a graph created from the experiment’s data that showed a significantly lower physiological reaction to real life violence after playing a violent video game over a non-violent video game.

Now translate what this means for the Pokemon video games. Is this desensitization really a bad thing in the case of our beloved franchise? In short, no. What this experiment proves is that when one plays a video game, it will physiologically desensitize them to the stimulus most encountered during the video game. The main focus of the main series Pokemon video games is the animals. Collecting, studying, and battling the animals. Children playing these games would, yes, be desensitized to aggressive animals that are attacking the player and his or her team. What makes this a potentially good thing is that it will reduce the stress levels of children around animals in real life. Desensitization is actually a “very effective” and common therapeutical treatment for those who suffer from phobias, as long as they are “not being forced” (Carranza). This would help all those many children with fears of animals get over their fears by reacting less to animals in real life. This is because a physiological reaction is when one enters their ‘fight or flight’ mode during a stressful situation. Many psychological disorders (such as phobias, anxiety, and panic attacks) have been found to have connections to the ‘fight or flight’ response being triggered when it should not be, which is sometimes caused by things such as not developing a strong mental protection from stimulus through experience in early childhood development stages. Video games, like Pokemon, are perfect for building up that mental resistance that is created through desensitization.

Another study that indirectly opposes the view that Pokemon is harmful to children’s psychological development is a study about the appreciation of nature that was done by Sun Joo Grace Ahn. This study put people in virtual reality bodies of animals in order to see if they would act differently afterwards. The researchers found that the people that did participate in the study felt a more positive connection in real life to nature. This is relevant to The Pokemon Company because they released a spin-off video game series call Mystery Dungeon where the player’s character becomes a pokemon for the entirety of the plot. Those who argue that animal violence in Pokemon increases aggressiveness are proven wrong by Sun Joo Grace Ahn’s study because the players would actually be more involved with real life nature and animals despite the violent nature of the video games.

 

The Pokemon Company emerged from the depths of Nintendo in order to make a very well-known name for themselves in child-oriented titles that are meant to provide construction and entertainment for the youngest generations. Some people argue that the Pokemon franchise is negatively impacting the cognitive development of children, but the logical evidence mostly disagrees. Many experimental studies give proof that Pokemon provides healthy support for the developing minds of children. This support includes the development of unconscious attitudes towards animals and other people through the use of strong moral creativeness, social interaction, and stress reduction. Our children, being exposed to more and more stimuli as our world grows, are in desperate need of sources of entertainment that both hold their attention and promote mental growth at the same time. Pokemon has the potential to be that source for years to come.