The Negative Effects Of Violent Video Games

Over the past few centuries,video games have become a great leisure and hobby among kids of all ages and cultures. With the advancement of technology, video games have advanced highly in its realism and genres. This high type of advancement brought the video game industry to a multi-billion dollar industry. However, with realism, comes negative effects as well. Ever since the creation of violent or “mature” video games, there has been a constant debate on whether it will increase violence in the player. Although, not all video games are violent, and just increase skills in a player such as hand-eye coordination. Nevertheless, there is research going on for the link between violent video games and youth violence. The question is which event happens first in the sequence, do violent video games aggravate a person’s violent behavior, or does a person get rid of their anger through playing violent video games? Either way, violent video games are not beneficial to our society.

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

Today, you are most likely to see that the first item on a child's christmas list is any video console with violent video games included. For the most part, nobody actually pays attention to the harm they could be exposing their young kids to or maybe they do not notice until it is too late. Its irrational to think that a violent video game would not be able to psychologically and silently affect the mind of a young kid, as it is also causing the kid joy at the same time. But this irrational idea can be proven wrong through research about the effect that violent video games cause on young kids. This effect, that the research mentions, can negatively impact their lives at a young age. Research from different association state that violent games can increase the rate of kids fighting among their communities up to actually committing real crimes. Violent video games also affect the children's emotion toward certain topics such about crimes, fighting, and mass shootings. In certain, video games that portray women getting sexually or physically abuse, can also lead to them doing this certain actions as they grow older. The young kids start to lower their empathy and kindness toward family members, friends, and any person they interact with. Yes, every situation is different, but young children are still exposed to the danger that violent video games have, and their effect on the kids mind. Even though it all depends on the person and how deep they take the video games, but this

Over 85% of video games contain some type of violence; some video games showing stronger acts than others (Carnagey et al. 1). The exposure to such violent content affects the way humans perform regular actions in their daily life and their perspective on those violent actions. These video games are everywhere, thus being available to anyone who would like to enter a virtual reality where they have control. The more people are exposed to it, the more addicted they become, and the harmful effects become more noticeable. Video games with violent content are harmful to American society because they affect the mental health of the player.

Picture this, you are running through the woods with your friends, a small water gun glued to your hand. It is the best day ever. Except that you have a paper due tomorrow which you haven’t started, you are trespassing on someone’s property, and you tripped on a log a few minutes before and hurt your ankle. Teenagers are known for their rebellious and dangerous behavior. Although pulling stunts and playing games may be fun they also need to consider the dangers and outcomes of these actions. There is much controversy of whether or not violent role playing games are good or bad for people including teenagers. There are many people who believe that the positive effects it has on people outweigh the negative effects. However, there are also people that argue that the negative effects outweigh the positive effects. Although violent role playing games seem fun and harmless they aren’t and are very dangerous, have many illegal aspects to them, and keep people that are playing them unfocused on school or work.

Enemies coming in from your left, a building collapses in front of you, but you plunge ahead. A bomb goes off behind you, taking thousands of innocent lives. You hear a bullet whiz past your head and out of the corner of your eye you see bright red blood seeping out of your ear. But you ignore it; you have to keep going if you want to win this battle.

Violent video games have been around a long time. The problem with video games came from a video game in 1976 called Death Race where gremlins were getting ran over with a car and then they turned into tombstones. It was also a problem because some seemed to believe that the gremlins resembled stick-figure humans. Some people argue that violent video games has caused violence towards women, increased bullying, and even school shootings. Critics even argue that these video games make players violent, reward them for the violence, and teach our young that violence is a satisfactory way to handle our conflicts. There are a few video games that I’m familiar with that made the top twenty-five of all time, Battlefield, Mad Max, Mortal Combat, The Call of Duty Series, the Grand Theft Auto Series, and more. The list gets longer and longer but I just added the most popular ones.

When films were first created, they were not always treated as the art form that they're known as today. They were treated as inferior to classic art forms like paintings and music. However, with time films have began to be respected as art and with that, many people analyzre the various ways they effect people. In a mirror image, video games have only been around since the early 1980's having many people believe the same thing that they did when films were first created. What follows is an analysis of how video games affect the end-user i.e. Gamer physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, and culturally.

Eddie Makuch stated that "Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks.” (Makuch, 2014). According to Background on the Issue (2016), 97% of children in the United States play video games. This contributes to the development of domestic video game industry, with more than half of the top-selling video game companies promoting violence (Background of the Issue, 2016). The release of the video game "Death Race" marked the start of violent video games in 1976. This gave way for many more violent video games to be generated once the manufacturers took away Death Race. Games like Night Trap, Cluster Revenge, and Murder Combat begin to surface. (citation) Violent video games have many negative effects and influences on children. Playing violent video games may result in children beginning to show more aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, and teach children that violence is an adequate way to resolve their conflicts.

Throughout recent years there has been many stories, well, more like excuses that adolescents have blamed violent video games for their violent behaviors. Can children truly use this as their excuse anymore? Many studies on this subject have recently been in the spotlight over the concern of young violent offenders, with numerous governing leaders and child developmental specialist concerned whether violent video games are the true cause of violence in children. With the growing number of school shootings and violent acts that children are displaying throughout the nation, it makes you wonder if the main cause can be just as simple as a violent video game. If so, cannot playing violent video games prevent such violence? The use of violent video games is not an excuse for children that have aggressive or violent behavior because other factors are involved in children with violent behaviors.

Statistics show that 10 minutes into playing a violent video game the average person becomes desensitized to the fact that they are killing someone. Now it it may seem like nothing when you play these games. But when people, especially children play them often it starts to become the only thing that they think about. Even if it is “just a character” in a game it becomes so to them to pull that trigger. I’ve witnessed this happen in my own household and I don’t hesitate to say: violent video games are poisonous to the brain.

Games are made to be interactive and enjoyed by consumers. People of all ages played games to relax and think about something besides work. Games were made so that people can have fun and not have to take anything personal or seriously. The controversy all started when a game called Death Race was introduced in 1976. It was a game where the players drove cars and ran over monsters called Gremlins. These monsters would pop up a tombstone after their deaths. At the time, games like these were controversial because there have never been a game about killing or murdering anything that’s fictional or nonfictional. Due to the situation of players and parents complaining, the creators of the game had to take down the games from store shelves.

In today's world, video games have become popular since scientist Michael Higginbotham made the first video game entitled ''Tennis for two'' which is known as “pong” (Brookhaven National Lavatory). As technology developed, video games have more details, are more appealing, and are more realistic. Furthermore, in today's world, violence has been a problem in America. In most cases everyone has experienced violence, whether it is on television, movies, or in their own home. As people search for a solution many people would say violent video games are the cause of this problem. Violent video games have been seen as the cause for aggressive and negative behavior among society. However, games do not inflict this behavior, for it is already instilled in the youth’s mind, there other things that promote violence, and playing violent games can be beneficial.

There have been incidents of people opening fire into a crowd and having violent outbursts. Many say the reason for this, is that these violent outbursts are associated with what they do on their own time.They play video games, and not just any type of mobile device, “Candy Crush” or Super Mario Kart game, but video games that require for you to harm others. A scientist has studied the effects of media violence on behavior since the 1950s and other video games since the 1980s. Research has shown that young people who play violent video games can become a little more hostile and aggressive. Now this may sound bizarre, “Violent video games being the cause of the madness in the world” but for sure it could probably stir some strong emotions in a person. It is unclear whether playing such a violent video game can cause the likelihood of a person committing a crime or etc. But we the people need to ask ourselves is violent video games the main cause, should it be banned or not. The main trait that’s being revealed here is aggression. To trigger this trait in a human mind can not only be by violent media it could also be triggered from how person’s lifestyle or how this individual acts in general. ,

Violent video games have always been a hot topic since the release of the first Mortal Kombat in October 1992 for home consoles, which, because of its violence, resulted in the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). There have been studies that show a correlation between violent video games and aggression resulting in both an increase and decrease in aggression among players, but all if not most studies have only been short-term experiments. The real question is whether violent video games cause an increase in short-term aggression to the point where the players start to commit violent actions because of it, but, if the aggression does increase, how to prevent the short-term aggression from increasing to the point where it becomes a problem without taking the games away.