Across the globe, the use of video games has been on the rise since they first hit the market. These video games are designed on various platforms thereby targeting their usage amongst children, teenagers as well as young adults. Playing video games occupies a big part of the way they spend their free time and some have even ended up being addicted to playing video games. This has raised an alarm especially considering the influence they might have on the young minds.
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Video games that involve violence and combat have elicited reactions from different circles like the regulatory bodies and experts on mental issues who argue that they should be restricted since they might have a negative influence on the kids prompting them to engage in violent crimes.
Upon this concern being raised, various studies have been conducted seeking to show a relationship between video games that involve violence and existence of violent behavior amongst the young people.
Video games hit the market in 1970’s but the graphics were very simple and were not as combative. Games such as Pacman were built on a simple platform that would not be termed as excessively violent.
The video gaming field was later to be revolutionized in the 1990’s as technology advancements allowed for more descriptive and detailed graphical images most notable being the ability to view blood as fluid and making killing look as it happens in the real world. This marked the entrance of video games such as ‘Mortal Kombat’ which allowed the video game player to enter a killing mission.
The alarming nature of the violent video games elicited reactions from the law makers prompting the U.S congress to issue a regulation seeking to have the game developers come up with a way to rate them in the basis of age limit. This did little to halt the developers’ efforts to come up with advanced video games with the next innovation being more interactive 3-dimensional violent scenes where the user was able to be placed in the middle of the battle as the ‘first person shooter’.
The trend has since continued with more and more combative video games being invented and used by the young people and the situation has further been fueled by the rise in the usage of internet.
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Studies conducted on this field in the past resulted in arguments with some showing that there is a relationship in playing violent video games and aggressive behavior while other studies showed mixed outcomes. Most of the research however showed that violent video games brought about aggressive personalities.
These studies were backed by recent cases of violent cases in schools e.g. the 1993 case of Columbine High School where two students (Eric and Dylan) went on a killing spree and in the end shot 12 students and a teacher. The two were said to be addicts of ‘Doom’, a violent video game.
Further evidence to link the two was seen in the video they had recorded just before they went on the killing rampage where they mentioned the “Doom’ video game. Several other cases of young people going on shooting rampages have been reported and substantial evidence given to prove the link between the murders and playing violent video games (Ferguson 30).
To try and explain the relationship between violent video games and aggression amongst the users, experimental, correlation and longitudinal methods have been used. Experimental research studies have only so far shown that playing violent video games only arouses a temporary short lived arousal of aggressive behavior. In correlation studies where the participants are required to fill in forms, the aim is to investigate the effect violent video games may have on personality and behavior.
Correlation studies are said to be influenced by one recalling past influences but all in all the final results have indicated that violent video games result in hostility and aggressiveness. Young people who are regular users of violent video games are likely to engage in more physical confrontations. Longitudinal studies involve the study population being observed in their natural living patterns.
These have shown mixed results concerning the relationship between playing violent video games and aggressive behavior. The immediate point to note is that such studies are open to a lot of influences with the biggest being that the subjects being studied are also exposed to other violent influen
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