The debate about if violent video games having a negative influence on minors seems constantly discussed whether it is true or not. On January 15, 2013, the Video Games Rating Enforcement Act was introduced to require that all video games have a rating label on it. The law prevents those who are not of age to play it and making it illegal for mature rated games to be sold to them. This act was introduced after the Sandy Hook shooting, a shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary, on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooter, Adam Lanza was twenty years old; before going to the school he killed his mother then twenty-six people, then later himself. When the FBI did their investigation they found many violent games in the room …show more content…
The study includes a group of students playing first person shooting games and measuring their aggression after playing the game (Keim, 2013). According to Brad Bushman, a psychologist at Ohio State University “We did a comprehensive review of every experimental study, reviewing 381 effects from studies involving 130,000 people, and results show that playing violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and physiological arousal.” Although the results didn’t clarify if anger and aggression carries into their everyday life, imagine those who play on an everyday basis for hours at a time. Another physiologist Teena Willoughby, from Brook University did a study on 1,492 kids from ages ranging from 8 to 19. The study showed that the ones who played the violent games for a long time, their aggressive behavior increased (Etchells, 2013). To get more of a deeper understanding on if this theory is true the Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice examined 227 juvenile offenders in Pennsylvania. The investigation showed the level of video game exposer of the criminals. Those who frequently played violent games were associated with violent acts such as gang fighting, hitting their parent, or attacking another person (ISU, …show more content…
He was a 7th grader that attended Sparks Middle School in Nevada. He got bullied for wetting his pants and students would spill water on his pants teasing about not being able to hold his urine and having a speech problem. On October 21, 2013 Reyes took two handguns from his house, belonging to his parents and went to school, killed a teacher, wounded two students, then killed himself. Police found evidence of 69 different violent video games, 47 of them first-person shooter games such as Hit Man and Call of Duty; including an expression of angry notes. He was a troubled child with the stress of not living up to his parent’s expectations and was abused by his father. The investors also found web searches looking up “top 10 evil children” and the Columbine School Shooting as well (Glionna, 2014). In the police report the parents of Reyes said that they were aware of him playing violent video games but didn’t know the amount of time he spent doing it (Renzo Gazette-Journal, 2014). In result of getting bullied he looked for inspiration and guidance from violent video games to plan his
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.
People only look at a man like this and see all the damage that he has caused, but if you look at the situation with a symbolic interaction perspective, you begin to understand that the man most likely grew up in poor conditions. For example, the man most likely grew up in a poor household where he was mentally or physically abused by his parents. This sort of thinking is not an excuse for beating your wife, or committing a murder, but when you look at the world with a sociological imagination, it opens up your eyes to the different interactions a person like Hernando has experienced throughout his life and his crime makes more sense. Now that our eyes are open as students to sociological reasoning, how is a child’s development and education affected by the videogames he or she
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.
Research has shown that immediately after playing a violent video game, kids can have aggressive thoughts, angry feelings and physiological effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. In addition, studies that survey large populations of kids on their game-playing habits and measure aggressive personality traits or self-reported aggressive acts — physical fights, arguments with teachers — often find an association between games and aggression.
In 1998, the US software industry sold $6.3 billion worth of video games (see Unknown). Not bad for an industry that didn't exist 25 years ago! Yet despite its continued growth, all is not well in the video game industry. School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Conyers, Georgia and many other towns have shocked the nation (see Malcolm). Understandably, grieving parents and sympathetic citizens are searching for a cause for this "outbreak" of youth violence. It is natural to assume, "when children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." (see Maker)
Register Staff. “Sandy Hook Report: Lanza had a game called “School Shooting” on computer.” Web. Nov. 25, 2013. Feb. 11, 2015.
“Breaking news tonight at 11, three students dead, several wounded after manic depressed teen lashes out with a handgun…” Americans serve witness in recent decades to this scary yet familiar occurrence. The cause of this familiar scene is minors suffering from social disorders and aggression. The major focus of blame is the entertainment industry including television, movies, books, and recently video games. The state of California decided to address the concern of video game violence by passing a law banning minors from purchasing games that are considered “violent”. However, the law is unconstitutional and unnecessary.
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?
An article on Procon.org says, “A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that children, especially boys, play video games as a means of managing their emotions: "61.9% of boys played to 'help me relax,' 47.8% because 'it helps me forget my problems,' and 45.4% because 'it helps me get my anger out.". If anything, shooting games help people more than hurt people because they get to release their anger and problems on Fictional characters. PIxels on a screen instead of real people. Isn’t that better? Some might say that casual players that aren’t angry could become mad from the game either by hackers, “campers” or the difficulty. However, there are no studies from reliable sources that say those reasons have caused actual violence. There have been many fake or unreliable articles about this. Wouldn’t parents encourage their kids to play a shooter game if they got angry? According to them they shouldn't because they are violent, causing this anger that people have to be used on someone else.
Video games are a rapidly growing industry. There are nearly two games sold for every household in America each year (Anders 271). The vast majority of these are sold to adults, but there is no national law that prohibits minors from buying violent video games. A few states have legislation pending that will prevent this, but the fact is that minors do have access to violent video games. There is a voluntary rating system implemented by the ESRB, where games are rated based on their content. The games that are rated Mature are not supposed to be sold to anyone under seventeen and Adults Only titles, but “some retailers do not impose such limitations” (Anders 271). The bottom line is that minors do have access to these violent games.
Violent video games have become more realistic every year. Children spend about 40 hours seated in front of a screen killing cartoon characters. It has been debated whether minors under the age of 18 should play violent video games that contain physical harm, killing, and sexual assault. In the contrary, people say video games increases the capacity of learning of children, but violent video games cause great damages. Although there are an increase learning skills playing video games, violent video games should be prohibited to minors because it changes an individual behavior, physical, and brain.
For example, regarding if video games cause aggressive behavior in children, in the opposite view think that violent video games should not be banned and sell it in everywhere because it is just a game that they will not be able to do in real life. However, David states "Although a link between video games and what the researchers define as “aggression” may exist, there is no causal link between violent games and violent criminal activity" (Willis 149). This mean that aggression does not have any relation with a criminal activity of an individual at all. In addition, there is another expert who believes there is no link between video games and people’s violent actions. Christopher, who is a professor assistant at Texas A&M University, insists that there is no correlation between aggression behavior and video games showing in his own meta-analysis that this theme was out of evidence and supporting that video games do not cause aggression behavior, that everything arises from the need to find a reason to blame after commit terrible acts of violence (Willis 175-179). However, while this view made some valid observations, this is not entirely base on facts. One of the best example is Andres Behring Breivik who decided to bomb a government structure in Norway, leaving eight people dead and several of them injured and affirming that a shooter game had helped him to do this massacre (Netzley 49). This shows that games are extremely damaging to society and violent video games cause violent actions. Another example is Jared Padgett a freshman student who killed a classmate and then suicide himself. Jared liked to play shooter games what left doubts about if this pastime can encourage children or adolescent to commit a violent act, and the idea that video games are violent in nature (Glynn
Violent video games are special games, which negatively influences to the attitude and behavior. These video games are popular between children and teenagers. Since 1980-s years violent games are in political discussion. Because when teenagers usually play violent video games, they are becoming aggressive and then they face with psychological problems. For this, some people claim that violent games are harmful for society and they affect to behavior and health.
“YOU SUCK!” “I killed him!” “Head shot!” These are just a few examples of dialogue spoken by children while they are playing violent video games. These video games might seem like harmless fun, but what if the violence in these games is affecting the behavior of young players interacting with others?