Violent Video Games

Violent Video Games and Our Youth

Western Governors University

Violent Video Games and Our Youth

Unfortunately, like adults our children cannot escape violence. Violence is present in TV programs, Radio programs, magazines, movies, commercials, music, and the internet. Violence is present in most forms of entertainment. One form of entertainment children may enjoy is video games. Violence can even be found in our children video games. There has been much concern about how violent video games affect our children. Research suggests that being exposed to excessive violent video games has a negative impact on children because it makes them numb to violence, it makes them more aggressive and they imitate the violence they see.

Children learn from repetition and from modeling after things or images seen. Being exposed to violent video games makes children numb to the violence by conditioning children to see the world in the same way like the video games. Children are not able to separate the two (Griffith, 1993). Because children cannot separate reality from non-reality, it causes them to become numb to violence and the pain and suffering of others and even the value of human life. ( Koniji, Bijanet, & Bushman 2007) In the research done by Koniji, Bijanet, & Bushman (2007), adolescent boys who were able to identify with the characters in the video games became desensitized to brutality even more when situations were more realistic than fantasy. In reviewing the research of Carnagey & Anderson, (2005) it was noted how numb the players also became after playing violent video games. The researchers found when a racing game rewarded players for their violent acts; these players were more likely to attack an opponent than when the same game punished players for their aggressive behaviors. (Carnagey & Anderson, 2005).

In a research, 30 boys were broken into two groups. One group played violent video games more than three hours a day. The...