With the rapid development of new gaming systems, violent video games have become well-liked by children and adolescents. The playing of violent video games has always been a controversial topic, but in recent years it has become a heated debate. Whether the playing of these games desensitize the player or not. Video games have been around since the late 1970s, however violent video games were introduced in the 1990s. In recent years the violence in games have increased along with the enhanced graphics making the games more realistic. Violent video games can have positive and negative effects on children and adolescents.
Playing violent video games have become a major concern in society. Individuals are psychologically, physiologically,
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When playing the game, they will learn new moves to defeat the enemy. Now that the new moves are in the player mind, they will use the new moves on anyone.
Excessive exposure to violent video games can desensitize a person emotion and empathy. Desensitize is to diminish emotional responsiveness to a negative or positive activity after repeated exposure. “...continued exposure to violence will lessen a person’s normal negative emotional reaction to further violence exposure (Barlett 390).” When a child or adolescent play a violent game, they become desensitize to any violence around them. This is because their brain will think this is normal since it is all they see. “Decreases a person’s levels of empathy in relation to realizing the serious consequences of violence toward victims in real life (Zheng and Zhang 1748).” Playing violent video games have been linked to
Works Cited:
Anderson, Craig A. and Brad J. Bushman. "Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature." Psychological Science (0956-7976), vol. 12, no. 5, Sept. 2001, p. 353.
Anderson, Craig A., et al. "Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern
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.
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.
Video games have become very influential on children and adults (Stafford, 1999). With violent video games humans are more prone to act aggressively, to have aggressive thoughts and become numb towards violence (Harding, 2009). Apart from these they are
Anderson, Craig A. (2003). An update on the effects of playing violent video games. Retrieved October 5, 2010 from http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa09/dis/02/extra/update_violence.pdf
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.
Some would argue that people’s emotions have a much greater influence on the change in behavior while playing violent video games. For example you could base the violent behavior “...not by the actual game, but by the emotions caused by prolonged use and frustration of not being able to get through the tough parts. Sometimes the seriousness of people’s emotional responses is not always taken into significant account when the research is conducted” (Danielski 1).
A significantly large portion of the video games created within the past 5 to 10 years contain some form of violence. On top of that, some of the most popular video games out in the market today are extremely violent and warrant an “M” rating for mature. Video game developers are well aware of this trend and continue to produce more graphic, interactive, and realistic content. Therefore, there is a concern that the vast amount of violence in video games is changing how youth develop and what they perceive as normal. Many researchers believe that there is a link between video games and increased aggression in the people who play them.
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.
Ever since the spawn of video games people have been glued to the fun and challenges they present. Over the years, these fun and challenging games evolved into violence and shooting. As a result of this evolution, controversy has arisen about violent video games leading to behavior issues. Do they lead to aggressiveness and hostility? Does excessive video game violence change how the brain reacts to violence? These are just a few common questions doctors and researchers have been trying to answer. Through all of this debate, a common consensus has been established. The constant and repetitive violence in video games can lead to a wide variety of behavioral issues despite some debate.
The journal article entitled “Kill pixels not people: exploding the fake scientific consensus on violent video games” by Ronald Bailey covers the effects of violent video games. The article defends the idea that violent video games do have a negative effect of making the player more violent or aggressive in real world experiences. The main supporting ideas mentioned throughout the article include; crime rate statistics, experiments, and knowledge of video game violence (Bailey).
Researchers state that, “the most frequently cited mechanism by which the games can result in aggressive behavior is the social learning theory” (Sherry 413). The researchers go on to argue that since game players are rewarded for performing violent acts in the video games adolescents may transfer this to the outside world. Another mechanism researchers cite for the effects of violent video games is the general arousal method. This method says that the highly violent games provide the arousal that is necessary to become more aggressive (Sherry 413). These arguments are valid and open up the controversy on video game violence, which has been going on for years.
Out of the many studies that have been done to examined video game violence and the influences it has on player aggression none of the results necessarily tap well into serious aggression or violence. One of these studies was performed by Dr. Ferguson who recruited 302
Many studies have taken place to determine the effects of violent video games on children for example, “Irwin and Gross (1995) assessed physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, pulling at clothes or hair, kicking) between boys who had just played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the violent video game were more physically aggressive toward peers” (Anderson, 2003). This study done by Irwin and Gross proves that children lose basic social skills after participating in playing violent games.
“We cannot and will not ban the creation of violent video games. But, we can prevent the distribution of these disturbing games to children, where their effects can be negative.” (Kohl, Herb). Nowadays most trending entertainments are revolving around electronics technologies such as virtual reality, video games, and media. As the technology becomes more sophisticated and advanced, most violent video games are becoming more realistic and make the player feel part of the battle and killing the enemies. It is undeniable video games have their own positive side for adults who play responsibly, but they have several disadvantages, which can hurt children's behavior, mental development, and school performance.
Video games have become immensely popular since their introduction in the 1970’s. The video game industry has since evolved into a leading player in the entertainment industry, and video games of all genres have become a popular pass time activity for children. However, according to a recent study, as many as 89% of these games have violence as a dominant theme. Potential harmful effects of the violent content of video games have been scrutinized over many decades. Views expressed in the debate over whether violent video games create aggression are often extreme, either idealizing or vilifying video games. Some studies suggest video games can provide an escape from school work and social activities and they may offer opportunities to display