Do Violent Video Games Encourage Negative Behavior?

Hundreds of studies have been done to determine whether violent video games will really make juveniles more violent. Randomized experiments were used in several studies to examine the short-term effect of violent video games (Anderson and Berkowitz et al. 90). In these studies, children were randomly assigned to play violent or nonviolent video games and then were observed when given an opportunity to be aggressive. The result was that children who played violent video games usually behaved aggressively.

Many people believe that violent video games play a big role in the violence we see in schools today. Gaming plays a large role in children’s lives and have begun to

A ponderous medium of media is video games in co-relation to violence. Video games encourage violent behavior in children as they are at a crucial stage of adaptation.

The main argument of this article is that video games have a direct link to short term and long term aggression. The author presents this argument by providing studies from peer reviewed articles that all conclude that video games do cause an increase of aggression. The main point of this article is to answer the question, “Do violent video games lead to aggression.” The article is about the effects of violent video games leading to aggression. The author uses recent examples, like the Sandy Hook and Washington Navy Yard shooting. In both of these examples, the author cites that both shooters had a history with playing violent video games. The author uses a study which selected individuals to play violent video games for a certain period of time. The study would then compare the results to a group who played non-violent video games. The study concluded that violent video games cause a direct link in aggression due to humans reenacting the actions the characters within the video games perform.

The article, “The Truth About Video Games and Gun Violence” by Erik Kain discusses how video games and gun violence correlates. The author opens up with someone by the name of Aaron Alexis who resorted to gun violence while playing video games that contained violence. There is a violent video game that scares parents and behavioral experts. There has been a debate on whether people who play video games later have violent behavior. Throughout the years, video games continue to show images portraying violence.

Prolonged scenes of massive violence, graphic sexual content, and animated blood are examples of statements that the Entertainment Software Rating Board uses to depict the content in over fifty- five percent of the video games rated yearly. The debate of whether the aggressive nature of these video games influences youth violence in our country has been heatedly battled for decades. Since the mid 1980’s, it has been suggested that high profile cases of violence are due to an aggressor’s excessive video game use. However, much like a cold case the type of connection between video game use and youth violence remains without a definite answer. Most believe that video game use negatively influences child aggression acts in our country. Others firmly declare that video games provide a realm of opportunity for child development. Ultimately, it is impossible to say that video game use affects every child the same way. New studies suggest that video games do not affect every child that plays a game. Although violent video games are innocuous for the majority of adolescents between the ages of twelve and eighteen, the effects of these games are aggravated in those with pre- existing antisocial or depressive traits.

In their research of violent videogames and the effect on children, they have found that “the simplistic belief that exposure to media violence will lead directly to individual violence is clearly wrong.” (Kutner, Olsen, 2008) I am going to ask you to look deeper than this. I assert that although violent video games are thought to encourage real world violence, they actually help to prevent it.

The inquiry whether violent entertainment affects a child's brutal behavior is an argument that has been disputed upon for several years. Most researches performed have concluded that violence in the media does not relate to the acts of a child, unless the child has been exposed to various types of environments. Other research is clearly lacking a direct causal relationship between violent video games and youth violence (MassGeneral,2012). Children's acts of violence are determined by what or with whom they are associated with.

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.

A video game is “an electronic game in which players control images on a television or computer screen” (Merriam-Webster). Video games have been entertaining and challenging gamers since the Game Boy to modern console games. Despite the simplicity of the definition of video games, a video game, especially ones containing violence can have a large effect on the gamer. Because of the realism and advancements in the video game industry, video games can influence the player, and can make the gamer more aggressive, even if the game is not a violent video game. Even though video games have grown in popularity over the past decade, some have not been too popular with parents, for the reason that they are too violent. Violent video games affect

Overexposing children to violence through television and gaming content have contributed to their aggressive behaviors. “Playing bloody computer games causes many problems for children”. “According to researchers at these problems include increasing juvenile delinquency, rewiring children’s brains towards violence, breaking rules, and isolating children from the outside world.” (Al-Warafy,

Approximately 90% of American kids ages 8 to 16 play video games for about 13 hours a week (Harding). There are many different kinds of video games but the particular genre that is becoming more and more popular among kids is violent video games. Games like “Grand Theft Auto”, “Call of Duty”, “Hitman” and “Mortal Kombat”. Each year these games become more realistic and more violent, leading some people to believe that there is actually a link between video game violence and real life violence. For decades research has been done on this topic to see if violence in video games can cause more aggressive behaviors in players, especially younger players. There are a lot of factors to consider on this issue like the research that has been

Concerns about the effect of media violence on children extends back at least to the beginning of the mass media, with the issue raised with reference to films, radio, television, comic books, and so on. As technology brings new types of media to the fore, the issue shifts to depictions of violence in these new media. Both popular sources and scholarly address this issue, asking in effect how violent video games change children’s behavior and make them more violent, assuming that it is believed that this is the case.

“On the other hand, considering a specific violent video game may have the reverse effect and actually reduce perceptions of negative effects if it is difficult to generate arguments for negative effects of the specific game” (Ivory, Kalyanaraman 4). Although you may believe that violent video games increase the youth violence rates, in actuality some violent video games can have separate effects on youth depending on the child for instance, one child could become more violent whereas another child will not have the urge to be violent.

Video games have become a very popular everyday activity in today’s society. Video gaming is a booming business taking in more money than movies and DVDs. From young children, to teens, to adults, everyone is playing video games. I see the effectiveness of video games first hand. Three out of the five members of my family spend more time playing games than an average teen or adult should, and here is where I began to see the issue. My little brother is 7 years old and has been playing 17 and older games since the age of 2. He does seem to act out some, but that just means his case is not as severe as others. In discussions of video game violence, a controversial issue is whether or not video game violence causes behavioral problems in children. While some argue that as gaming actually makes people less violent, by acting as a safety valve, others contend that children exposed to violence are more likely to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior.