Video Games cause Violent Behavior in Young Children

Introduction

When one says video games are bad, in an emotional sense, and furthermore have no other comments as to why video games are bad, one would assume that video games are bad. Having heard no other opinion on the matter, deeming video games as bad would be logical reasoning.

Video Games cause Violent Behavior in Young Children

Video games have come and gone, and we myself, a video game player, have noticed the continual and, what seems, gradual increase in everyday violence, not just in video games. When an article or person(s) states that the violence in today's media is getting out of control, we would agree, but conversely, that is exactly what articles and people were saying 10 years ago when the overall media was a lot less violent than what is deemed as violent today. When choosing articles that we would deem relevant to my paper, we narrowed my search on more recent documents that seemed interested in proving the fact that there are hazards with playing video games, and what those hazards were. Out of those documents we have gathered a thesis for the basis of my paper; playing or observing violent video games is a cause of the increase in aggressive thoughts and aggressive behavior, and ultimately desensitizes young children to violence. (Clark, 131)

Video games were first introduced in the 1970's with game releases such as Pong, but did not become popular until the 1980's. In an article written by a leading researcher in the field of communication, Gary W. Selnow, he states "heavy users of television were also heavy users of video games" (Clark, 131). It should be made relevant that most of the research involved with video games, is also paralleled with television research. He also stated "while playing video games...serves some of the same needs as watching television, it also does something TV cannot, provide an active involvement with an electronic medium"2. But Selnow was not fully pro video games, "US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a statement indicting video games for producing aberrations in childhood behavior and causing users to become addicted, body and soul". (Clark, 131)

It seems that even those who give credit to video games are even saying that they also do harm. While some will just say straight out that, in general, (Clark, 131) video games are bad; some will center their objections on the topics of video games. When a child plays a violent video game the child almost always plays the protagonist, and the video game itself will play the antagonist. The protagonist is most always able to kill and will never receive a negative consequence for killing. In fact the player will always receive some kind of reward. "These games promote automatic aggression with no room for reflective, other-oriented, responsibility-taking reactions. The required violent actions are devoid of moral emotion and moral judgment."

So to enforce and then reinforce the thought that killing is justifiable and then the thought that ...