Government Regulation On Video Games

Government Regulation on Violence in Video Games for Adolescents

Ever since violence in video games emerged on the scene of entertainment there has been a controversy surrounding them. Mortal Kombat was the first, and continues to this day to be one of the most brutal games in terms of straight up violence, and more recently made the addition of sexual themes with female characters being represented in revealing outfits. The content and quality of video games have improved tremendously over the past fifteen years, with the story lines and graphics becoming more in depth. And with that improvement, comes parents and others questioning or becoming worried on the violence that their children are experiencing in these games, which in turn is ruining the image and purpose that video games are actually trying to portray. They focus on all of the “potential” bad things and don’t even acknowledge the many benefits that video games and the industry provides. Violence in video games is not as harmful as people seem to think.

There seems to be very little evidence of a real concrete link between violence in video games and aggression in adolescents. While the video game industry was exploding in popularity during the end of the 20th century (from 1994 to 2000), the exact opposite was happening with the violent crime arrests associated with juveniles (ages 15-17) and young adults (ages 18-24). The arrests for juveniles dropped by 44% while young adults dropped by 24% according to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Considering these numbers it still doesn’t totally rule out a relationship between the two. To go along with the U.S. Department of Justice’s numbers the U.S. Surgeon General’s o...

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...ng in playing video games, whether it be adolescents or adults, the effects that they have on you are mostly all positive. The way games are managed today in terms of ratings are perfectly fine. It all falls on the parents of the kids that get them the violent games to play, then proceed to complain that bad things are coming from these games. That is basically saying that you are mad on how the election turned out, but you didn’t vote. If you didn’t vote then you have no right to say anything regardless if you are correct or not. In the end, to reiterate, violence in video games isn’t as bad as people portray it to be and the sooner that people stop blaming the video games and not the irresponsible parents or stores that sell to minors the sooner we can get back to playing games and just having fun without anyone throwing a hissy fit about something that is nothing.