do video games cause violence
English 102
29 October 2014
Do video games cause violence?
For many years, children would go out and play in the yard, ride bikes, or play soccer for fun. All of that has changed since the evolution of technology. In today’s society, kids of all ages are no longer playing outside or with their friends. Instead, they are locked up in the house all day playing video games. Why is this bad? Video games are neither built to help heighten the learning skills of kids, nor are they designed to impact them in positive ways. Video games in this day and age are all about shooting, killing, zombie apocalypse’s, etc. This is a problem because these kinds of games can cause violence and aggression in kids worldwide.
Research has long shown a cause-effect relationship between television violence and aggression among children and youth who watch it. Many social scientists expect video games to have an even greater impact for the following four reasons:
Children are more likely to imitate the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games, players participate as a character, and even choose which weapons they’ll use while fighting other characters.
Video games by their very nature require active participation rather than passive observation.
Repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral rehearsal for violent activity. Rewards increase learning, and video games are based on a reward system (Video games & Violence)
After looking at those four reasons, you can see why violence in children can be tied with the video games that they play. Some might also suggest that kids not only follow what they see in video games for those reasons, but also because they seem to think that life is like a video game. They put themselves in a fantasy world where they can go around and shoot people and “kill zombies” without the consequences. For example, one man killed
29 October 2014
Do video games cause violence?
For many years, children would go out and play in the yard, ride bikes, or play soccer for fun. All of that has changed since the evolution of technology. In today’s society, kids of all ages are no longer playing outside or with their friends. Instead, they are locked up in the house all day playing video games. Why is this bad? Video games are neither built to help heighten the learning skills of kids, nor are they designed to impact them in positive ways. Video games in this day and age are all about shooting, killing, zombie apocalypse’s, etc. This is a problem because these kinds of games can cause violence and aggression in kids worldwide.
Research has long shown a cause-effect relationship between television violence and aggression among children and youth who watch it. Many social scientists expect video games to have an even greater impact for the following four reasons:
Children are more likely to imitate the actions of a character with whom they identify. In violent video games, players participate as a character, and even choose which weapons they’ll use while fighting other characters.
Video games by their very nature require active participation rather than passive observation.
Repetition increases learning. Video games involve a great deal of repetition. If the games are violent, then the effect is a behavioral rehearsal for violent activity. Rewards increase learning, and video games are based on a reward system (Video games & Violence)
After looking at those four reasons, you can see why violence in children can be tied with the video games that they play. Some might also suggest that kids not only follow what they see in video games for those reasons, but also because they seem to think that life is like a video game. They put themselves in a fantasy world where they can go around and shoot people and “kill zombies” without the consequences. For example, one man killed