How to Combat the Effects of Violent Video Games Playing on Children

How to Combat the Effects of Violent Video Game Playing on Children

“Stay alive at all costs! Kill the bad guys! Head shot!” These are just some examples of the dialogue spoken amongst children who play violent video games such as Call of Duty and Halo. Twenty years ago, this would not be the typical game play dialogue amongst children, but with the surge of popularity of violent video games this is now becoming the norm. Playing these violent video games is just another way to pass time on a Saturday morning or an afternoon after school. However, this pastime comes with repercussions. Studies have shown that consistently playing violent video games leads to psychological, mental, and social disturbances in children. Some extreme cases of the effects have been seen in tragedies such as the 1999 Columbine shootings, the Virginia Tech massacre, and most recently the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which each criminal had been known to be an avid video gamer and practiced for their crime using violent first-person shooter video games. The repercussions of playing violent video games can be stagnated if parents take the initiative to discuss the inappropriateness of violence, limit the amount of time their children play video games, and understand the ESRB system.

To completely distance children from violent video games would be extremely difficult. According to the Children NOW organization (an organization “for people who care about children and want to ensure that they are the top public priority”) 89% of video games have some form of violence and 50% have some form of serious violence. These numbers indicate that the ultimate goal of the game is to perform an act of violence, ranging from killing or assaulting character...

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...n issue for the newer generation of parents. Onguardonline.gov (a government website meant to inform Americans about the dangers of media and technology) suggests keeping video games in the common area. By doing so, children are put into situations in which they must interact with their family members.

“A kid who has no other risk factors for violence, and plays for an hour a day for a couple of days, he’s not going to become a school shooter” (Anderson). Everything is okay in moderation. It is up to the parent to monitor their children’s interaction with violent video games, discuss the negatives associated with applying violence to daily life and encourage other social engagements other than playing video games. Parents should familiarize themselves with the repercussions of playing violent video games and understand how they can protect their child from them.