Q

Assignment briefs about how video games effect the life & health of people getting addicted to it.

Home, - The impact of violent video games on young gamer

Introduction

It is reported that more than 97% of kids (between the ages 12 to 17 years) in United States prefer to play video games. These population of video game users contribute around $21.53 billion towards the video game industry. Videogames is considered as both good and bad for the young video-gamers. Many people blame video games as the major reason for developing anti-social as well as violent behaviour in children. In 1999, two senior students in Columbine murder school students along with one teacher. Apart from his they injured 21 other people with their gunshots. For this incidents, the parents of most of the victims blamed violent video games as the culprits were a big fan of the FPS video games (Boxer, Groves, & Docherty, 2015). According to California law, it is restricted to sale the violent video games especially to the minors. On the other hand some psychologists claim it as the source of making children smarter and increasing their thinking level. Games like ‘Sims’ and ‘PacMan’ are considered by most of the people as a source of promoting intelligence. The selling of violent video games should be banned globally in order to reduce the negative impact on children. Parents should be able to differentiate between violent video games and constructive and positive video games. The three major argument for supporting the thesis statement used in the report includes: i) makes kids aggressive, violent and hostile in nature, ii) decreases the empathy level and kindness in children, and iii) continuous playing video games make children overweight and obese (Calvert, Appelbaum, & Dodge, 2017). Violent videogames are very often found to have induced violent and aggressive behaviour in children’s real life. Scientifically, it has been also proved that participating in continuous violent and action games creates violent behaviour. According to Psychological American Association (APA), children involved in violent video games are more likely to be engaged in aggressive behaviour. Research indicates that these children are mostly involved in anti-social activities like bullying, physical fights, arguing with friends and teachers, and showing aggression on peers and family members (Markey, Markey, & French, 2015). According to the report of National Centre for Health Research, long term exposure to violent video games can generate aggressive behaviour in the children. A study conducted on 67 percent of parents and 90 percent of paediatricians by the Psychology of popular Media culture also shows that violent video games enhances violent behaviour (Ferguson, Olson, & Kutner, 2014). One of such example is of two teenagers of Tennessee who got inspired from ‘Grand Theft Auto III’ and shot the driver of a passing car. These violent video games are the outstanding teaching tools who reward kids for engaging in such violent behaviour and the children get easily drain into it. Decreases empathy and kindness level by playing violent video games also highly affects the children’s emotion and personality. The player are found to have with a decreased empathy level, prosocial behaviour and have lower grip on their emotions. The virtual world of video games makes them detached from the real world of family and friends. Research showed that the children exposed to these games display a lower level of moral reasoning skills as compared to their friends who are not exposed to it. These children are less interested in helping the people associated in the real world. They became less socialised and kind towards other, generating a world of uncaring and anti-social young people (Gentile, Bender, & Anderson, 2017). Video games which portray violence against women has been found to increase the violence towards women (for example, rape supportive attitude) in the real world. Target Australia has to stop the sale of ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ in 2014, after getting complaints from customer regarding the game’s illustration of women. The games consists of the option to murder a prostitute in order to get back the money. The children who are always exposed to these violent actions become numb or immune and often imitate these violence

Overweight and obese

It is evident that the kid who spends their time in sedentary activities are found to be more overweight. According to a report of German study, the children spending more than of 1.5 hours per day in front of a screen (video game or television) are more likely to be obese as compared to other kids. This in long run has the potential to cause more serious problem related to their health. Based on a survey, 84 percent of the kids prefer to play violent games without the presence of their parents, and 45 percent of the kids prefer to have the video game system installed in their bedroom (Greitemeyer, & Mügge, 2014). This report shows that the children like to play these games with more comfort and ease, without any physical activity. Survey reports illustrates that boys gamers are more overweight as compared to girls gamers, since boys spend around three hours while girls spend around one hour for playing video games. Playing video games actually takes away the real aspect physical activity and makes children lethargic and overweight. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children who spent around 4 to 5 hours on video games are on the higher risk of being obese as compared to those who spent only 1 to 2 hours.

Leave a comment


Captcha

Related :-