Violent Video Games Don T Influence Kids Behavior

There is overwhelming scientific research that suggests that playing violent video games are harmful to children and adolescents. The scientific evidence has uncovered several areas in the development of children and adolescent that are negatively impacted because of the exposure to and playing of violent video games. Some of the key areas that are negatively affected include brain activity, stress levels and behavior.

People have always been looking for a reason why horrible things happen. The media is quick to blame video games as the target and cause of many shootings that have occurred, ever since Columbine and Quake. People have been blaming video games for violence for years now, ever since violent video games have been made. News reports blame video games more and more for each shooting, telling the public how this person played video games for x amount of hours a day, and that video games caused him or her to shoot people, and how video games encourage and reward violence. Anti-video game lobbyists have been campaigning to have violence removed from video games, citing resources that they themselves have created as reasons for

Many parents do not take the time to look into or research the type of video games that their children want to play. For many children, violent role playing games are a major part of their life everyday. Violent role playing games can be fun, but can also lead to aggressive behavior. Research has shown that college students who participate in violent role playing games are more aggressive rather than playing a nonviolent video game.

Playing video games does not cause violent behavior. Don’t get me wrong, some video games show horrific acts of violence. “A recent survey found that 92 percent of U.S. kids--ages 2 to 17--play video games, and their parents bought 225 million of them last year to the tune of $6.4 billion.” (Sider 79).What’s here to argue is that violent video games do not cause violence among children, but the blame for violence should be on the individual and people who should have taught the individual better. If kids are not able to see the difference between reality and fantasy, then they really can’t be blamed for committing acts they see in a game and then imitating, not fully understanding the consequences of doing it in the real world.

Some teens and children are not yet mature enough to understand that those video games are edited and made with animation and that real people can not do all the stuff their character does. Some start to take cues from their games. These games are teaching them how to be extremely violent. According to the article

Video games also play a big role on promoting violence. Even though most adults don’t play video games, our children do. And if we let our children play violent video games, wouldn’t you say that they are going to become violent? Kids learn by their surroundings. So playing a video game that teaches them about punching and kicking others they will do the same with their friends at school. And then we ask ourselves why the kid next door took a gun to school and shot his best friends?

Is it ok for children to play violent video games? No! I see no reason for a child to "play" a game that promotes or teaches violence in any way. I do not allow my children to play games that uses violence as a means of reaching a specific goal.

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,

Video games in their entirety do not cause violence. When you look at the games that are out now, most depict events in life past or present. Others go on a fairy tale ride that most people can discern the difference.

In this age of technology, it's very safe to say that a large majority of the world's population has played at least one video game. This can vary from playing games on console, like Xbox-One, Playstation 4, and for the older generation, the NES to playing mobile games like Tetris. There are many consoles that span from the creation of video games. This has opened opportunities to make several kind of games. These can vary from side-scrollers like Super Mario Bros. on the NES, to Role-playing games (RPG) like Final Fantasy IX on the Playstation 1. While this has caused some great games to surface, it has also allowed intense violence to be let into games. Parents and anti-gaming communities state that this is why kids can become violent. This is false, because violent games can be avoided to prevent this issue, and the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has even made various precautions to make sure parents know what they're purchasing. Comprehensible symbols, detailed lists, and age restrictions prevents children from "becoming violent".

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.

There are many views as to whether video game violence causes children to behave violently. Many children play violent games because that is what most people are playing and they feel that they need to do so as well. Violence is not only in video games but also in all other forms of media because that is what sells and what will make entertainment companies more money.

Because, most of the violent games are designed on the reward system to create motivation among players to continuously use it (Mathiak et al., 2011). Some people believe that violent video games make children more creative (Squire, 2003), which partly could be true, for it involves using of strategies. But this creativity comes with a cost, i.e. permanent aggressive mind, which can never be feasible for one’s life. In a study (Dietz, 1998) found that violent games make children to confront with their teachers because this is what they observe in the games and their characters. This is very ceases the respect of teachers and overrides the true relations and respect. Children also fight with their peers in schools or playgrounds because games usually exhibit violent behavior and fighting and children adopt fighting as their usual norm. Many studies including (Anderson, 2004) concludes that violent behavior is harmful for family and society, it makes peace of society at stake and respect faces constant danger from the users of violent video games. Although some people don't believe that video games cause behavior problems, there are three reasons that indicate the opposite

Games that withhold violent scenes can result in bullying. Children will see what they are doing in their game, and think that it would be acceptable to do that type of thing in the real world. They may not be going as far as shooting someone, but they can turn that violence into a smaller aspect of hitting or kicking one of their fellow classmates at school. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry maintains that,” studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become ‘immune’ or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior with greater exposure to violence.” (Freeman, David, Violent video Games May Curb Bullying In Vulnerable Children, Study Suggests, Huffington Post). Sixty-five percent of middle school boys and thirty-six percent of middle school girls who played at least one Mature-rated (M-rated) game harass/bully someone, compared with thirty-nine percent of boys and fourteen percent of girls who did not play M-rated games (Playing violent Video Games Causes More Aggression, Bullying, and Fighting, Superior Than). A recent peer-reviewed study

The graphics in games now make the game almost look as if it were real life. That has brought the video game industry a lot more players and part of those new gamers are young children. The issue is when a child is presented with a violent video game that has really good graphics the child has a better understanding of what is going on in that game. Because children can relate what is going in the video game to the real world, that leads children to believe that the actions being done in that video game are accepted in society. If the children believe that its right from them to do violent actions that they learned from the game there attitude starts becoming more aggressive. Anne Harding says “children who watch violence in the media can internalize the message that the world is a hostile place...”.