Communication & Media Arts High School. . . Should Teens

Thousands of teens in the United States play violent video games everyday, for hours on end. Teens and children playing violent games are now accepted as a part of life. They sit in front of a screen and watch blood and gore, with no emotions and without cringing. The games become increasingly more violent, as the age that children begin to play these games drops, from twelve to ten to eight. Now, we have six or seven-year-old children playing games rated M, for 17 and older. Teens should not be allowed to play violent role-playing games because it teaches them that violence is acceptable, that it is fun to be violent, as well as desensitizing them to violence.

97% of teens ages 12-17 play video games today. They contribute to the growing industry of video games which is now at $21.53 billion (ProCon.org). In your life you have most likely played some type of video game, such as a game on your phone or on your computer. Did that game make you feel like you wanted to cause violence? Violent video games do not cause mass shootings, it allows kids to relieve their stress, and it is the competitive nature, not the violence in video games.

Many teens play videogames and other simulated forms of the games they play, however, a large majority of adults find these simulated games very problematic for teens. Research shows that while playing a simulated violence game it causes the players to become more intense, pessimistic, and affects their daily lives in a negative way. Playing stimulated violence games is not very beneficial to the player or people surrounded by these games. Simulated violence games should not be played.

The ESRB issues more than one thousand ratings per year. Five percent of those games are considered to contain mature content (Clements, 2012). Additionally, only an estimated eighteen percent of games sold, throughout the year, are designated with mature ratings (Clements, 2012). This low percentage could impact the reasons why legislation has not taken action against mature content published within video games. Research has proven individuals younger than seventeen are typically unsuccessfully able to purchase video games designated with a mature rating (Clements, 2012). Additionally, those under the age of seventeen typically receive the mature rated game as a gift from a legal guardian or a friend, which bypasses the guidelines set forth by the ESRB.

Videogame violence is nothing new. As was noted in a recent Washington Times article by Eric Rozenman, one of the earliest videogames, Death Race, created controversy back in the mid-1970’s: “The game involved an automobile driver running down pedestrians. The later expired with unconvincing moans, the skilled motorists recording a tally of crucifixes.”

It is agreeable that there are some correlation between teenagers playing video games and how it affects the youth mentally. Heavy consumption of violence video games does indeed stimulate a change reaction in the brain waves, but there is no hard evidence stating that those changes causes teenagers to act aggressively and violently. On the contrary, it is a popular beliefs that violence video games does indeed causes teenagers to displayed unpleasant behaviors and actions because that is what they learned and observed from the games. Therefore, parents should limit and regulate the amount of time their teenagers are playing violence video games so that they can protect their children from negative behaviors.

The number of parents that allow their children to play mature games is very low compared to those that are never allowed. Most of the children that are allowed to play these mature games are generally thirteen and older. (ESRB, 2007)

My first reason why teens shouldn't be able to buy violent video games is that violent video games train killers and make them better shots. Ok so the Sandy Hook case was a terrible shooting at a school. The killer in the shooting trained himself on Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 and got 83,000 online kills and 23 head shots. The games also train killers on scopes and help them understand what it is like to be in a battle. It also teaches them to expect the unexpected because in Call of Duty Black Ops 2 there are people coming

With the popularity and production of video games constantly rising since the mid 90s, you would also imagine that the violent and illegal acts in teens would have also risen, but that is not the case. In fact, violent acts in youth have steadily decreased during the past 20 years, and are projected to continue to fall. While there could be many reasons for this drop in violence, the most likely one is that the inclusion of violence in video games actually provides an outlet for frustrated and angry teens to safely discharge their anger in the digital world, and not upon anyone in the real world. Video games offer an area in which your mind can explore and wander with no fear of consequences, so in

The evolution of video games has taken a drastic change since the 1970’s when video games were first introduced. Since then every decade video games have become more violent in nature with strong language and realistic to suit society today. Craig Anderson states that with more violence in video games they would sell better than games with less violence (Anderson, Gentile, and Beckley pg.5). Violent video games really became popular when the first person shooter games were invented so that we could see through the eyes of the player, as if we were really experiencing it. Society wanted better graphics and games as time went on new technology was invented and society matured in electronics. This meant that for game creators would have to come up with something better selling than the last. Creators would make the games more violent and more realistic each time so that way they can keep the interest of their consumers. Each game would increase in blood or gore slowly, but what really got consumers to buy their games would be the update of graphics in the consoles or games. This is due to the drastic changing of technology and the maturing of consumers wanting better and newer violent video games. Violent video games can cause children to behave violently if not correctly supervised.

Video games are likely to encourage aggressiveness in teenagers. They may lose their sense and become violent when very much addicted to these games. In particular, those kids who love first-person shooter style video games are at more risk of becoming highly aggressive. Their thoughts might also turn hostile.

Should teens be able to buy violent video games? No, teens should not be able to purchase video games that contain violent content. Violent video games in a person’s early years could result in much, much worse things later on in life. Studies show that violent video games could result in bullying, criminal activity, or in worse cases, suicide.

The next game in line created in 1993 expanded the violent video game genre. Games such as Doom, Night Trap, and Mortal Kombat were highly realistic and violent. There were blood splatters all over the scenes of the games. Bodies being torn apart by knife wounds or beatings. Players used guns to shoot down alien invaders in Doom. People fought people in the game called Mortal Combat. Kids were introduced to violent video games at a very young age. People saw that kids needed a restriction because they could have imitated the actions of the games. Many adults supported the actions to create the ESRB in 1994 after the passing of Mortal Kombat into stores. ESRB is an organization that gives out a content ranking to videogames based on the games

Politicians and gamers have been arguing about violent video games for years now. There are many solutions to this controversy; however, there are two good solutions that are good for this argument. When they see a minor playing violent video games, they can solve this problem by enacting one, to follow the ESRB rating, or two, to allow the parents to make the final decision to decide whether they should allow their child to play a certain game or not. Parents should do more research and try out the games for themselves if they think that a game is not good for their child. If a parent isn’t doing any research on the game that he or she are buying for their children, how will they know if it’s right for them? Good parenting is what allows a child to grow up knowing that he or she are being allowed to play games that are right for them, so they don’t get traumatized. Many children grow up to play games that are to mature for their taste. Some kids can’t handle these games. Whether the ESRB rating is enacted, and a minor plays a game with an M rating that should be seventeen and up.

Violent video games are always a great source of fun for all ages. Ever since i could remember i have loved violent video games just as much as any other 18 year old would. My favorite video game to play is GTA or grand theft auto. Its a great 1player game where you can basically do whatever you want and get away with it. It has been around since the late 90s and there has been 6 games created and there all rated M for mature players only .When i was younger I was always aloud to play to violent video games but my parents would make me play the game with the volume off. I used to think this was stupid i would still play the game with volume up and reenact everything i seen. Now that I 'm older i see what my parents was trying to keep me away from,all the violence in video games. I would get angry and break anything in my path, and i could cost my parents a lot of money on new remote. In 2005 an law was passed stating that reuquired violent video games to include a 18 on the label and made it illegal to sell these kind of games to minors. In my experience with video games i agree they can cause a lot of anger and emotion but never caused me to completely go off the deep end.