Violent Video Games and Aggresive Behavior

Video games are one of the most improved technologies of the past twenty years. Characters have advanced from 8-bit cartoons to being lifelike. Some people think these games are becoming too realistic for young children. With more violent video games being produced, and more children becoming interested in these games instead of family friendly games, there are a growing number of people who believe that kids will grow up to be more aggressive, and that violent video games should be abolished. However, parents play the biggest role in their child’s life, and have the responsibility to buy games they think are appropriate and discipline bad behavior.

First of all it is important to specify what exactly children are being exposed to when playing these games. There are several controversial topics inside of mature rated video games, most notably being violence and gore. According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or the ESRB, there are over eighteen thousand video games featuring violence and gore, several of which feature realistic looking human characters fighting and even killing other human characters. Another controversial topic in video games is the harsh language. The ESRB notes that an astounding twenty-eight thousand video games have language that someone could find offensive. Many children are younger than ten when they begin to play video games and being exposed to offensive language could start the child to using similar inappropriate language. Approximately the same number of video games have drug or alcohol abuse. In the majority of games containing drugs or alcohol a character will use them with little to no consequence, being completely unrealistic possibly making a child believe they could use the same d...

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...hat you don't notice anything around you. The long term effects of gaming is different than what most would likely imagine, they include the facts that; “gamers are better at jobs that are active or mentally puzzling, and the majority of gamers live happier lives because they can do something they love with just the push of a button”(Walsh, 2004, p.22).

So although some would like to blame aggressive children on video games that simply is not the case. Many children go through an aggressive stage when they are growing up, but most get over it fairly quickly once their parents let them know what they are doing is wrong. Since there are many more studies showing video games have either no impact or a positive impact on children than there are showing a negative impact, the discussion that mature video games should be abolished is nonsense and unfair to older gamers.