Streetfighter....Mortal Combat....Mario...Counter Strike..etc. What do all these have in common? They are all video games. These are games played electronically on computers. And they are the latest craze among the kids like you. Tell me, how many of you can resist a video game? Video games are fun. They entertain you. With the colorful characters filling up your screen, your eyes are treated to a visual feast, with matching sound effects. They are also challenging. They present problems for you to solve or overcome. They start out with easy problems, after which come harder ones. And everytime you succeed in completing a round or you are awarded bonus points, you get a feeling of great satisfaction. And you are challenged to do even better in the rounds to come.

      Some scientists say that playing video games can help you become comfortable with computers. They also teach you how to solve problems and to plan ahead. They also foster eye-and-muscle coordination. What the eye sees serves as the stimulus. The response then gets translated into muscle movement, and presto! your fingers press the buttons. What's more, they develop mental alertness. The reactions needed must be made in a matter of seconds. You react only a second slower and it's to late, the game is over.

      But some studies show that playing video games can be harmful to your body. How is this so? For one thing, playing video games for a long, uninterrupted period of time, say, 12 hours, can make your eyes very tired. Some kids even develop tics. A tic is an uncontrollable twitching of the muscles in the face, such as those of the eyelid. The same will happen to your arms and fingers. They can also get very tired since you're doing basically doing the same movement over and over again.

      Video games create noise. This is bad for your ears. If you get to play in your house and you remember to control the sound level of your set, well and good. But if you're playing in a video recreation center with so many machines being played at the same time, then the noise will be so loud that it will harm your ears.

      In Japan, 121 children have suffered from video-game epilepsy in the last few years. These children had to be hospitalized due to the severeness of their attacks. Now that you have learned about some harmful effects of playing video games for too long, maybe you'll be more careful next time. It's not bad to have fun. Go ahead. But remember, too much of anything is bad. So don't let those video games take up too much of your time in the future.