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effect of violent video games on kids
video game violence effects on youth
video games and violent behavior
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Society has evolved drastically within the last 50 years due to new and ever developing technology. Video games, which were developed in the late 1980’s early 1990’s, are a product of the new life changing technology. Video games, or to be more specific violent video games have been most popular among children and young adults. Parents do not tend to see the consequences that evolve around violent video games; especially kids who play more then ten hours a weeks worth of these games. Only recently has the videogame technology progressed and became more engaging using life like simulations of violence, igniting aggressive behavior in young adult and may in fact desensitize them to violence. Although, some may believe that violent video games do not contribute to any of these factors; research shows that violent games have a profound effect on aggressive behavior in children and young adults coupled with the factors of parenting style, lifestyle, and stages of brain development.
I am not surprised to find out that the majority of kids now a day are resolving their conflicts through aggression. For instance, I have a 16 year old brother who plays violent video games on a daily bases. Unfortunately he displays a great amount of aggression and anger towards his younger sisters. He is constantly using explicit language, hurting his younger sisters; by as little as throwing books at them, and is always making inappropriate sexual comments around others. When my parents try to resolve these issues and take his video games away, my brother gets very angry and knocks anything or anyone in his way. My parents try to take action but it never works out due to the greater issues my brother can cause. In the article, violent video games cont...
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...in violent movies, books, and violence in their own writings. The report did not find a relationship between playing violent video games and school shootings. Also according to Dr. Christopher Ferguson, department chair of psychology and communications at Texas A&M
International University in Laredo states that, “he has not come across any link between playing violent video games and likelihood for violent behavior and de-sensitivity,” (CBSnews). After these school or public shoots occur Ferguson believes that it is interesting how eager some segments of society are to grab onto this narrative of violence in video games; that in a period of moral panic…. It gives [society] a sense of control over things they cannot control. The public wants these violent games to be the main the cause of aggression and violence among children and young adults, but they are not.
Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, and Seung-Hui Cho all have a few things in common, they are all school shooters that have killed and injured a combined total of 149 human beings and are or were believed to be avid violent video game players, who also committed suicide immediately after carrying out their attacks. To the public, school shooters seem to share a direct connection to playing violent video games and that playing them leads to violent behavior. Violent videogames have become a highlight in the media and national debate for this very reason but, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a causative connection between participants of violent videogames manifesting violent behaviors. The media provides biased information that misleads citizens into believing that said link is well established and accepted. I argue that parents should make responsible and well informed decisions in regards to their child’s videogame activities in spite of the lack of scientific research.
The allegation that videogames cause violent behavior in children has been present as long as videogames themselves. Some researchers said that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was one intense gamer. “Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech Shooter was seen by his roomates as odd because he never joined them in video games.”(Beresin) This debate will continue to go on in this country as long as there are horrific crimes that occur. There is much written in the research regarding this issue, and many differing views. The research that is presented in the next few paragraphs supports the theory that it is not the graphic video games that produce aggressive behavior, but other factors in a child’s life that create violent actions.
With all these violence that had been going on within 2011 and 2012, the media question the safety of children playing violence game. Can the shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook and Columbine be a link to violence video game? An article from Parenting.com, Sasha Emmons, 2013, discuss about the December’s horrific massacre in Newtown questions about guns in media and their connection to real-life violence. They brought up the topic about the killer of Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza play the violence game Call of Duty. They question how much should parents focus on their child concerning on their child aggressive copycat behavior (Emmons, 2013). Parents all over the world are concern about their children watching and playing violence game. Some parent report about their child behavior. Should they worries when their child would image that house hold supply to be a gun, going around the house making shooting noise?
One would be hard-pressed to find a household without any video gaming devices. In fact, over eighty percent of American households some sort of gaming device. On top of all that, violent video games have surged in popularity, occupying over 50% of the 30 top video games sold in 2015 (Kain). In light of recent mass shootings, video games are routinely accused as the culprit that influences one to violence. Researchers all over the world have tried to establish a causal relationship between video games and violence. Some researchers have come to the conclusion that video games, specifically violent ones, spark aggression. However, other researchers have come up with the opposite conclusion, that the studies that portray video games as detrimental
People have always been looking for a reason why horrible things happen. The media is quick to blame video games as the target and cause of many shootings that have occurred, ever since Columbine and Quake. People have been blaming video games for violence for years now, ever since violent video games have been made. News reports blame video games more and more for each shooting, telling the public how this person played video games for x amount of hours a day, and that video games caused him or her to shoot people, and how video games encourage and reward violence. Anti-video game lobbyists have been campaigning to have violence removed from video games, citing resources that they themselves have created as reasons for such, poorly done studies where they confirm that kids are more aggressive through how much hot sauce they put on someone’s fries. While unbiased studies of video games and their links to violence are hard to come by, recent research has shown that video games do not in fact have a casual link to violence, and may even have the opposite effect. Violent video games have nearly no link to violence in teens or adults.
The article also mentioned about many other shootings such as the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings and how the shooter involved also played lots of violent games and that could have sparked his violent nature and that led to him shooting. The article also mentioned the mass shooting at the Connecticut movie theater and how the person involved also played violent games and there are lots of speculation and lots of people correlating playing violent video games and real life violence. Personally I don’t believe that playing violent video games has a correlation between the shootings. From my experience I too have played lots of games and some that would be considered violent but I don’t feel an urge to be violent, or have tendencies to act aggressive because of a game that's considered violent . I also read about how most of the people involved in the mass shootings had some type of emotional stress and psychological problems prior to the actions that followed afterwards. I known lots of people who play violent games as well they aren't inclined to go on killing sprees, I feel that it depends more so on the mental state of the person and if they are having some sort of issues already,
The early 1990s brought with it increases in technology and violent video games emerged with “person-on-person violence” which include games such as two graphic fighting games, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and a first-person-shooter zombie infestation game called Doom. By this time, youth violence had dramatically increased and peaked to one of the highest levels on record and various groups of school shootings shocked the United States. The more drastic response to this was the belief that video games were training young children to become murderers by simply playing these violent video games (Ferguson). In view of consumers’ violent nature, the vast majority of research concerning video games has focused on “the way game play impacts anti-social behavior” (Tear). The video game industry was aware of this issue and had to improvise quickly on a solution or there would have been a noticeable decrease in sales. Parents were and still are ...
Flanagan explains throughout her article that out of the American youth today, 97% of them play violent video games for at least two hours per week. Also in the article “Imaginary Guns Don’t Kill People, either” by Scott Shackford, he explains that since violent video games have become such a popular activity, it is considered surprising if one hasn’t played one by now. Violent video games show teens that shooting people is acceptable. In “Is video game violence bad?” by Christopher J. Ferguson, he states that the trigger of violent video games causes at least some of aggressive actions that happen throughout the world, including school shootings. For example, in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, two students carried weapons into the school and proceeded to kill thirteen people. Unsurprisingly, the roots to their actions were speculated to be prior bullying experiences and violent video games (History.com). Also, Ferguson states that violent video games are correlated with mass shootings across the nation. Teens that have been influenced by violence are a dangerous factor to themselves, classmates, friends, and
The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review on existing articles relating to the possibility of violent video games promoting aggressive behavior. The hypothesis set forth was that people who played non-violent video games displayed more Prosocial behavior versus those who played violent video games displayed more antisocial and aggressive behavior. A search was conducted on regular search engines on the internet, and on EBSCOhost using the title “can violent video games promote aggressive behavior.” The research articles presented are obtained from five case studies each focusing on different measures that were obtained, methods used, the participants involved, the designs of the study, and the results of the studies.
One article points out that video games have a big impact on children’s lives and that many of the games played are violent. Researchers have found that “nearly all children spend time playing video games” and studies have found that “8th graders spent an average of 17 hours per week playing video games” (Tamborini 336). Moreover, 68% of the most popular video games contain violence (Tamborini 336). So it is clear that many children have access to violent video games and they have a big impact on their lives simply because of the amount of time spent playing them.
At this day in age we bask in the luxury of having easy access to advanced technology at our disposal. From the World Wide Web, to cell phones, music, movies and video games the human race has thought of any and everything to keep us entertained. Over the years studies have shown reasonable concerns regarding the long-term effects of video games. These games can desensitize gamers to real life violence, which is usually seen in the younger crowd. The studies especially hit on the games containing player-on-player violence. Though these games are extremely entertaining and can get kids to settle down for a while, if not properly supervised, they can produce adverse effects. Other studies have shown that video games can be used as way to yield positive outcomes such as, good problem solving skills, cooperation in a group and the ability to flow. Although there has been psychological research on children learning through the actions of others some believe that children are automatically able to distinguish between what is just a game and what is reality. The longer they are allowed on their game system the more they become convinced that their games are real. Some researchers believe violent video games can channel the aggression of the child but the parents are to blame for what happens to the child after playing an excessive amount over a period of time. Children can become preoccupied with these violent video games which have been proven to be the cause of poor social skills, uncontrollable aggression and a false reality.
While many different case studies have been done all over the world, scientists have yet to prove that there is a direct correlation between violent video games and child aggression. Since the start of this quarter, this has been an issue that I have been doing extensive research on. Despite looking into several scholarly sources, I was surprised to see that many of my findings were pretty consistent with one another. For the mort part, what I found through my research was a bunch of statistics from case studies and the interpretation of those statistics from renowned scientists. In many cases, statistics and studies showed slight indications that violent video games have an effect on c...
Exposing someone to violent video games will train the person for doing violent actions that are shown in violent games. Grossman is a writer of two books on video game violence and thinks that video game is a major cause for violent teen behavior. On 1997 in a Paducah, Kentucky high school shoot out a 14 year boy shot eight people and five where headshots. This was believed to be a effect of the teen playing first person shooter games. The FBI say that trained law enforcement officers only land one out of five shots and this boy had no past experience shooting except for in the game. “Exposing children and adolescents (or "youth") to violent visual media increases the likelihood that they will engage in physical aggression against another person,” said expert Craig A. Anderson. Exposure to violent video games can cause a child to learn the...
A study in the medical journal Pediatrics discusses how a group of 181 Japanese students from the ages 12 to 15, and 364 U.S. children from the ages 9 to 12 were tested in order to observe the effects of violent video games. It was recorded that the children who were more subjected to the violent video games were more aggressive than their complements who did not participate in the games. (Moeller) The children who played the games also ended up controlling numerous situations inadequately; this involves pushing or shoving for what they wanted, or yelling at each other. It is tolerable to have faith in that this is a standard stereotype for children at this age; however, children are becoming more and more out of control and belligerent. Research has also found that, controlling for prior aggression, children who played more violent video games during the beginning of the school year showed more aggression than other children later in the school year
The question is, “Do violent video games influence children to act aggressively?” and “Can repetitive killing train a person to be violent himself?” Although the violence in these video games is fictional, research has proven the violence to lead to more aggressive behavior in children. Violent acts depicted in these games allow young children to believe that killing and fighting is acceptable and fun.