How and why does mass media influence aggressive behavior? More specifically, does playing video games cause aggressive behavior? Because children and teenagers spend an increased amount of time each day viewing/playing video games, they are shaping their values, attitudes, and behaviors. For people who do act out aggressively, the results can be deadly. Monthly, the news is filled with blood-chilling accounts of crimes committed due to a copy-cat obsession with violent video games. This paper will present a brief review of literature and reveal the difficulties in answering this question with certainty.
A huge controversy in today’s society is violent video games and their behavioral effect on the children and adults who play them. Violent video games have been blamed for bullying, school shootings, and even violence towards women. Many have fought that violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence, and that they are teaching the youth that violence is an acceptable conflict-solving strategy. Other sources have stated otherwise. The 2004 Secret Service has stated that only one-eighth of attackers have exhibited interests in video games. Violent Video games do not cause violent behavior or behavior problems because it has not been proven that there is a link between violent video games and behavioral issues, playing video games provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and reduces violence in young children, and violent juvenile crime has actually gone down since the violent video game popularity has increased.
Violent Video Games Promote Antisocial Behaviors. Video games that have violence involved can cause a change in behavior to gamers. ¨The researchers took a dim view of video games. In fact, they found video games correlated with everything from drug use to poor romantic relationships. And while some of this is unsubstantiated, plenty of it is backed by their evidence, in the form of university questionnaires, and the decade of research that's come before them.¨ Researcher analyze violent video games and came out with the conclusion that it´s not good. In violent video games there are things such as drug use or poor relationships that would influence negative thing to gamers. Studies have shown that video game tolerate drug use and poor relationships among peers.
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.
Technology is an important aspect of change in our world. As time goes on, we are introduced to more and more technology every year, which includes media such as video games. The increase of technology has also increased and improved the world including ways of communicating and distribution of information. More often used outlets of media are those used for entertainment purposes, like television, internet and video games. The ones who are most likely to engage in these media outlets are millennials and the most recent generation Z, because they have been introduced to these outlets from a young age. In fact, a study found that children spend around 9 hours a week playing video games (Polman, de Castro, & van Aken, 2008). It is evident that video games are progressively becoming more violent in nature, and with children spending as much time as they do playing video games, there are questions that must be asked, is the violent nature of video games effecting today’s youth? And if so in what ways?
In this study, people meticulously studied other articles based on criteria they created for the research question, and conducted a trial themselves to come to a conclusion. “The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive affect and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and sensitivity to aggression.” They deemed that violent video game usage has a direct and constant relationship with all behavioral activities related to
Adam Lanza was a twenty-year-old individual with a dream of wanting to become a Marine. When Lanza’s mother, Nancy, told him that he couldn’t be a Marine due to him never wanting people to touch him, Lanza became even more obsessed with the military. Lanza transformed his gaming room into a replica of a military compound. By cutting paper into targets and placing them around the house, Lanza was able to practice his shooting skills with a pellet gun that he learned to shoot my playing video games. Nancy started to worry about her son’s behavior and decided to investigate on her own. Days before an unwanted historical event, she called a friend about finding pictures of bloody corpses of children under her child’s bed. Along with the gory remains,
There are indicators that links playing violent video games to increasing aggression in young people. Teenagers who are expose to violent games are more supposable to increase the likelihood of experiencing aggressive thoughts, in which turns into the likelihood of engaging in physical aggression against another person. Furthermore, violent video games produce an emotional desensitization to aggression and violence to the youth (Anderson). Based on the observation teenagers are exposed to when they are playing violent video games, they will reenact almost immediately in real life if the situational contact is sufficiently similar to the ones in the games. Therefore, consumption of violent video games produces negative behaviors that are controlled by negative
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
The arrival of violent video games and the media covering recent mass killings, an emotional debate has developed about the impact of video games on aggressive, violent, and criminal behavior. Findings from certain research are contradictory: some studies show an increase in aggressiveness, while others suggest a decrease in criminality. The increase in the diversity of game platforms makes playing violent video games easier to play, which is a source of concern. Video games are not solidly anchored in the popular culture, while in the past an eccentric pastime no longer exists (Fournis 1). In 1971, the First Amendment was adopted to primarily protect speech critical to the government; in contrast to the English seditious libel laws, which allowed punishment for true speech derogatory. The Supreme Court decided that violent video games cause aggression in children solely based on the First Amendment instead of scientific evidence (Bushman 306). Both sides of violent video games have valid points, but they are missing the one key and most important point, which is the psychology within the household.
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Why do I think, “Violent Video Games Cannot Make People Violent”? I personally have been playing video games for many years and not once have I ever harmed anyone. I have never stabbed, shot, or even fought another living thing in my entire life. A man named, “Erik Kain” wrote an article on www.forbes.com stated that, “Anyone who has actually engaged in real violence---a fight at school, for instance---will know just how vastly different it is from the violence we experience on a screen. Real violence is frightening and overwhelming and takes control of your entire body.” This is a great example, because when engaging in a real fight unlike in video games you won't be as confident, cause if you were to lose that would be an embarrassing experience unlike
Screaming and yelling, my brother punches through his bedroom wall. It’s six in the morning and he’s screaming at my mom for doing laundry. Maybe he has anger issues? But his temper has only been this bad for a couple years now. Ever since he started playing video games, like Call of Duty. Violent video games have been a battle that my family has been fighting for a few years now. My brother, started out small, playing Nintendo games and simple games like Crash. However, my brother has always had a slight anger management problem and even with easygoing games, he became furious when he lost. Because he has lofty dreams of winning every game possible, he will not stop. Now, with video games, like Call of Duty and God of War, my brother has become even more aggressive. Freaking out whenever he lost a match. He used to be such a sweet little boy, but now he screams and disrespects my mother. Afraid to anger him, my mom does nothing. Video games have been taken away from him, but he will never be the same sweet boy that he was. Many families are fighting the same battle. Gamers like my brother would disagree that video games are the reason he is aggressive. He argues that the reason he is aggressive is because of my sisters and me, which could be a part of the reason but what have we done to make him disrespect our mother or to make him destroy his walls? Although children, adolescents, and video gamers would disagree, research has provided evidence that violent video games
But not all video games are violent: in fact, video games can promote cohesion through cooperation rather than competition. Multiplayer games sometimes implement a cooperative mode enabling players to use teamwork to achieve a goal instead of contending for supremacy. This cooperative multiplayer encourages “(against the stereotype of gaming as a socially isolating action) the development of team, social,
The second study discussed by Lee Suhn, Mickey & Barr, Rachel (2004), was conducted to determine the effects of violent video games on Prosocial and antisocial behavior by actually having participants play non-violent and violent video games while two appointed observers were recording information such as; the name, age, gender and ethnicity of the participant, the name of the game, level of violence, and check boxes for Prosocial and antisocial behaviors.