Violent Video Games Harmful To Children And Adolescents?

In today’s time with the new head turning technology in video games most of the games have some sort of violence present in them. Many games past and present incorporate some kind of violence such as, killing with weapons, using explosives, and crashing cars. With all of the present day technology all activities portrayed during in-game scenarios are becoming more and more realistic. In 2005 the state of California enacted a law to ban the sale of certain violent games to children without the consent of their parents. The law was created based upon the idea that with the realistic in-game events real behavior could be drastically effected by the violence. The worries are that tragic events such as massacres could occur based on ideas seen in games. Incidents such as high school shooting have heightened concerns of potential connections between violent games and violent actions.

Video Game Violence has been a big controversial topic for many years, going back to the most simple classic video games like Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede and Space Invaders,which eventually turned into more modern games like Destiny and Grand theft Auto. This research expands and analyzes the idea of how video game violence is always accused and put to blame for aggressive events and how the research of this is faulty . The way most people look at video games and how people try to connect them to violence could needs to be corrected. Within this research we will be looking very closely at how these studies and tests were done on violent video

The article by J. Ramirez, Clinton Village News, states that Violent Video Games Harm Our Kids ensuring the reason of violence in young people who have played countless hours of violent video games.

“According to data recently released by The NPD Group, in 2012, U.S. video game software sales reached $6.7 billion (174.8 million units) and computer game sales were $380 million (13.2 million units)” (Improving Economy). To many, the violent video game industry has turned all adolescents into mass murderers. However, they’re absolutely wrong. Very seldom do adolescents who play violent video games commit acts of violence, and the ones who do usually have a mental disorder. Instead of blaming the tragedies that occur on violent video games, the news media should explain to people that a large percentage of young males play violent video games, indicating that the two are uncorrelated. They should alternatively research other possible solutions to the crisis. In lieu of negatively affecting people’s lives, video games could potentially improve their lives!

The first body of evidence that supports the claim that video games do not cause violence in reality is that “almost all boys and most girls play video and computer games, including games with violent content” (Olsen, Kutner, and Warner 56). This would suggest that if all children play violent video games and video games did in fact cause children to act violently, then all children would be violent. As absurd as this suggestion is, when the claim came

In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that California could not ban the sale of violent video games to minors because studies "do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively."

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.

While violent video games have increased as a form of entertainment, an issue has begun to form on whether violent video games have a negative impact on children and adolescents. Steven F. Gruel (2010) formed an argument about the negative impacts of violent video games on children. The purpose of this paper is to critique Gruel’s argument by finding flaws and strengths using the methods of claims without data, overgeneralization, failing to cite sources, and considering alternative explanations.

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.

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?

Although violent video games are thought to encourage real world violence, they actually help to prevent it. I am focusing on violent video games and how they affect juveniles because I feel that this issue needs to be looked at in the criminal justice community. It is an unnecessary distraction to blame the actions of a disturbed youth on a form of entertainment that has been used by millions of people without incident. A review article published in The Psychiatric Quarterly found that many studies which claim to indicate an increase in aggression due to video games are, in fact, biased! Once the bias is taken into account, the studies no longer find any correlation between youths who play violent video games and youths who

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

Video games have become a staple in the entertainment industry. Families coming from various backgrounds across the world own a video game system. Shooting games such as call of duty have become particularly popular amongst young teenagers. These types of games have led to a very popular debate. The question being do violent video games make children violent? Prosecutor Steven F. Gruel believes that they do cause children to become violent while defense attorney Patricia A. Millett argues that there is not enough evidence to prove this to be true.

Over the years, the popularity of computer and video games has grown. Specifically violent video games make up more than 50 % of the top selling games. These games include violent themes that involve guns, crime, blood, and gore. There is an ongoing belief that these types of games are to blame for the many acts of violence in society and have encouraged America’s youth to act out in aggression. Several organizations, such as the PTC (Parents Television Council) have moved to discourage the development of violent games while also pushing for stronger regulations when purchasing such games. There is also debate among parents and concerns on how games can negatively influence their children. So is there a direct link between video games and violence? The truth is video games do not encourage violence in society based on several factors which include scientific studies, statistics on crime, and prevention measures adopted by game publishers.