Video Game Violence Leading to Juvenile Delinquency Essay Example

Wii console which could make people have physically active game play. Microsoft added something to the Xbox 360 which could enable players to use just gestures and their voices to play a game, a high-tech sensor called Kinect. Controllers shaped like guitars and drums were used in popular music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band and they allowed the players to act as if they were playing an instrument along with a rock song of their choice. B. Purpose As we all know, the people of today are very exposed to video games, children and adults.

We have conducted research on our topic to inform people of different aspects of this activity. In our research, we state the negative or some positive effects of video games and their characteristics that lead to these effects and other helpful information about video games. Through all of this research, we want to encourage people to be more careful of what they are doing or to open up people’s awareness to what simply playing video games can do to us and so that they can spread the word and control the exposure of violent video games to children and even to some adults who have become addicted to playing video games.

Through awakening the awareness of the human race to the effects of playing video games, life would be more peaceful and safer for every person. We also conducted this research to bring back the idea or purpose of video games in the first place. Not to convert peaceful and happy children to savages and delinquents but to entertain, educate and to even give “bonding time” to different people from

your family and close friends to even a kid in the same room. II. Nature of Violent Video Games Violent video games have plenty of things that would unnerve plenty of people or make them feel queasy.

Some violent video games focus on blood and gore. To explain further, there are depictions or showing of blood deformation or loss of body parts. These games are usually the ones involving zombies and games where you can cut off or blast off one individual body part. Some games even exaggerate the blood squirts when showing something of death in the game. Games usually have music to add to the authenticity of the games but the lyrics of some songs are not suited for children. These lyrics talk about profanity, sexuality, violence, alcohol and drugs.

Violent video games played by children under the age recommendation usually contain a lot of shooting and blood, and most of the time foul language. Games like Grand Theft Auto, an M-rated game, for example let you be the criminal. It is specifically the type of game that parents normally would not allow children to play. It basically hands the option of killing someone or stealing something to a child. And obviously children don’t get arrested for killing someone in a video game, and so some children grow up thinking this is alright or it’s “cool” and “awesome”.

This lets them grow up with the wrong values. In a game, if one person needs money and wants to get rid of one of his problems, he might just opt to kill his boss. III. Access to Violent Video Games The mature and the young can easily

purchase M- rated games or games not applicable to their age. Likewise, some youth or children accompanied by their guardians are allowed to buy these games. But what they don’t know is that most of the children they accompanied are indeed, the ones playing the games not appropriate for their ages. 2% of the children that are able to purchase these games with inappropriate ratings for their age, were able to purchase these without anybody accompanying them. Many children don’t even care about ESRB ratings anyways. Along with the youth’s ever growing desire for these “cool & awesome games”, the entertainment industry have also been aggressively been luring children to their newer games, and these are usually not appropriate for their age. For example the child friendly game LittleBigPlanet, by Sony, has content to promote a newer M-Rated game “Metal Gear Solid 4”.

Even worse, the new generation of children are extremely fluent in using computers. So they are easily able to download such games for free, using “torrents”. And because the internet piracy websites don’t even care about who is downloading the games, children can easily register and use fake age to be able to download games from the internet. Many stores selling fake games don’t even care how old the person buying is. There are many places like Green Hills that are filled with fake game stores that don’t care about the child’s age.

Some consoles like the PS3 have online game stores, which can be registered for with fake ages. And with a little excuse from the parents, the children can pay for these games that are most probably not even looked at by

the parents who allow their children to buy such games. IV. Reasons for Playing Violent Video Games There are plenty of reasons why people play violent video games. Like movies, television shows, and novels, music and other things entertain people and let them be able to relax and take a break in the daily problems they have in life, video games can also offer all that.

Video games can actually give us better distraction from our daily lives because it puts the player into the story and it is also very lifelike and full of action with all the shooting and fighting. Mastering a difficult game can also give a player a feeling of achievement. Some game enthusiasts believe that playing games sharpens their reflexes and exercises their problem-solving skills. Studies have shown that people who play games regularly perform better than non-players at certain surgical techniques and other complex visual tasks.

Social gaming helps people meet friends with similar interests from around the world. In other games, women appear overly sexualized, promoting harmful stereotypes but some games, like The Sims, appeal to female players, and many newer games include stronger female characters. Plenty of males need to find ways to let go or get over of their anger and their energy. They find violent games an effective outlet for their testosterone because they would still be beating people up and maybe killing them but nobody in real life actually gets hurt.

V. Effects of Violent Video Games A. Positive 1. Individuals It is said that playing these games can improve one person’s surgical skills and fighter pilots are even better than those before and it is said

to have been an effect of playing these kinds of games because they can be prepared through simply playing these games by being used to problem solving and having better hand-eye coordination through regularity of using your hands. Playing these games also give help to people around the world psychologically.

Games go get harder and harder and people usually fail when it gets too tough for them to handle. This usually builds a person’s perseverance because people will always try to succeed and it can be applied into their real lives. People will also learn to be able to multitasking and achieving plenty of objectives at once. These games, in a way, will be able to teach people how to kill two birds with one stone. Of course, war games will teach you how to think, analyze and make a decision quickly. We also learn to strategize effectively and anticipate any troubles we are too have.

If you are in a battle field and only blocked by walls with the enemy fast approaching, you will have to think on your feet. How many people are to come, which weapons are most effective against the number and anticipate from which direction they will come and how they will come with the knowledge you have about their army. Also, in some games, you have to be able to manage your money or your resources effectively. A person will eventually be able to be more aware of what he will and will not need and how much he has left to actually spend instinctively. 2. Family

Playing video games can also a family positively. A family can bond and have fun

together more when they play these games together. Parents can also earn the trust of their children when they tell them not to do what they see in these games. These games also release pent up rage or tension within the children of the family and because they lose their anger, they are able to think and understand more clearly when they are being scolded or when they are asked to do something they don’t like. As video games teach people how to budget materials, members of a family are able to manage money better as well.

This would help all families but especially families that don’t have as much money as others. Parents may also become proud of their children for the achievements they were to have in the future which need some skills only gotten from video games. 3. Society Video games also give plenty of benefits to our society. With all of the benefits it gives to our country’s individuals, we can all improve our society in our own little ways especially by learning what we can now so that we can perform well in our jobs once we become adults.

People involved medicine, driving, science and anthropology can greatly benefit from the skills on hand-eye coordination they earn and they help us save people, have fun and learn more about the past and other things in life. Children who play video games have increase planning and managing skills and so they can help improve different nations if they were to join the government or anything of relation to affecting the world. Aside from the utilized knowledge and skills that we can get from

these video games, we also learn attitude and emotional lessons.

We learn to cooperate with other people through online gaming and we learn to follow instructions well. Cooperation will then be easier to achieve because we will become so used to working with people we don’t know. This is especially important to those who are always involved with working with other people like blue-collared jobs because so many people have ideas to enhance our society and we need peace and not conflicts in between firms, companies and other kinds of groups. And also, our nation will be more peaceful due to the citizens’ following directions or rules. There will be less trouble for the eople in a society where there are hardly any crimes and people are able to live more happily. 4. School Video games, even as unrelated to school they can seem, actually help in educating children. Playing video games can actually improve the memory of a child because they constantly have to remember how much supplies they have left or the different order of buttons to be able to do a powerful move. They also help a child in school to have well-reasoned judgments and this is important in debates and in giving opinions especially in the subject of HEKASI or Social Studies.

Inductive reasoning and hypothesis testing are two skills also learned in playing these kinds of games. Like students in a laboratory, gamers must come up with a hypothesis. For example, players in some games constantly try out combinations of weapons and powers to use to defeat an enemy. If one does not work, they change hypothesis and try the next one.

Recognizing patterns is also naturally learned. Games have internal logic in them, and players figure it out by recognizing patterns. And the lesson that would help teachers the most, cooperating, is also learned through gaming.

People play with other people they don’t know online and are able to form teams and strategize well to win a game. B. Negative 1. Individuals Playing video games can cause a lot of changes in people. These people could have a disorder like A. D. D. (Attention Deficit Disorder), A. D. H. D. (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and Hyperactivity. Some video games teach people wrong values like being violent and aggressive in nature. Also, these people may spend less time in other activities such as, reading, sports, and interacting with the family and friends.

Also, this causes less time in physical activities that would benefit our own health. Video games can also cause obesity. Because of a person’s addiction to the game he will spend less time in taking care of himself and more time in eating. 2. Family If someone if your family is glued to his hand-held or game console, video games could be affecting your family negatively. Playing video games too often can promote isolation and seclusion and can cut down on your family time and communication. If your family members have unrestricted access to their video games, they may be at risk for becoming addicted to them.

Playing violent video games may also lead to increased violence and aggression in family members. Aside from affecting the relationship between family members, violent video games also trouble parents in raising their children. Violent video games’ effects are even more intensified

due to the interactive nature of games. The rewards and compliments games give to the victor of battles or wars affect the mood of a child. They become proud of themselves after they fight a hard battle. Children then instinctively become violent.

As a result, parents have to work hard to discipline them and remove the thoughts in their children’s minds that being violent is good. 3. Society The violence and other inappropriate things found in violent video games can give a very bad effect to our society. Violence can result to the deaths of many and would break the hearts of that person’s loved ones. Foul languages are also found in these games and as a result, are being spread to the public and even to the youth. This will cause loss of respect and actually encourage or awaken real-life conflict even if it is just between to citizens to two leaders of our country.

As violent video games can distract one person from his studies, he doesn’t learn much about what’s important and will end up being unsuccessful in life and indirectly, he would worsen our society because every single citizen contributes to either improving or worsening a whole nation’s or society’s lives. 4. School Playing action video games may enhance some visual attention skills but these visual attention skills aren’t the same skills kids need to pay attention in school. Playing video games may cause attention problems at school.

Researchers also asked teachers to evaluate each child’s attention skills at 4 different points over the 13-month study. The results revealed a weak, but statistically significant, link between video games and teacher-reported attention problems and the

pattern was consistent with the idea that playing video games causes attention problems. Kids who played more video games at the beginning of the study experienced increased attention problems at the end. This was true even after controlling for prior student attention problems. Teachers said the kids got worse over time.

There were also reports or studies on some children that have habits of playing video games. It was found that students, who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school, engaged in more aggressive behaviour. In addition, the time spent playing video games in the past were associated with lower academic grades in college, which is a source of frustration for many students, a potential cause anger and aggression. VI. Prevention The time we spend in playing video games can easily be managed. We can make a schedule so that we will have enough time for all our duties for school and for work.

We also can’t successfully prevent playing video games if we don’t have the motivation to do this. We must always remember that there is more to life than all fun and games. There are people in our lives for a reason. Soon, we have to take care of ourselves when the people who take care of us are gone. We know that certain people take their video games too seriously. However, video games themselves are not to blame for violence. The highest population of gamers involves younger people, and younger people are usually just living at home. This is where parenting comes in.

A parent should watch there children, monitor there game play, and note any variances in their children’s

actions. Some people cannot decipher fantasy from reality, and these should people not play games that involve violence. Most children played video games for many, many years. They have not yet committed a violent crime, nor have they attacked anyone. Why? Simply because they know that these things are wrong in real life. Most parents monitored their children and did not let them play overly-violent games at a young age. Good parenting is the key. VII. Statistics VIII. Related Studies

A person has given his view on the effects of violent games to his life and his personal view on these violent video games. “Now, these video games are simulators. There are flight simulators that teach you how to fly and there are murder simulators whose only redeeming social value is that they teach you how to commit the act of murder. If these things were rape simulators, we would not tolerate letting our children play them and yet, we sit and watch our children play endless hours, practicing blowing people's heads off. We had toy guns and I said, ‘Bang, bang, I got you, Billy. and Billy said, "No, you didn't. " so, I smacked him with my cap gun. And he cried, and he went to his mama, and I got in big trouble. And you know what I learned? I learned that Billy is real and when I hurt Billy, bad things are going to happen to me. Now, in the violent video games, I blow Billy's stinkin' head off in explosions of blood, countless thousands of times and do I get trouble? No. I get points. A 2008 study by the U.

S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that 20% of children under 17 surveyed had bought at least one M-rated game.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that three-quarters of boys in grades seven to twelve had played Grand Theft Auto, an M-rated game. Critics have also voiced concerns about the social values expressed in games, particularly their portrayal of women. In many games, women act as little more than “prizes” to be won by male characters. Some education experts study the way people play electronic games because the games require intense thought, learning, decision making, and problem solving.

Classroom teachers have experimented with using games, such as Civilization, to present educational topics in novel ways. Some game developers specialize in educational games, and such games continue to grow in importance. IX. Conclusion Along with all our research, we say that playing violent video games can result to juvenile delinquency. Yes, video games may have positive effects such as giving us skills not taught in school and may change our way of thinking for the better but we all agree that the bad of violent video games outweigh the good.

They distract us from actually studying for school and so we forget about our basics. They also isolate people from one another more than they make people bond especially in groups with people from different age groups because the adults may not know how to even operate these machines or not be comfortable with all the blood they’re not used to seeing or the younger age group might find it too much for them to see for they still have low confidence and bravery towards these things.

These

games also do more damage to our health and way of thinking than the progress it gives us concerning our physiological nature. They influence us to fight first and think second and winning fights will always earn us a reward and make us famous and proud. Also, as we have proven with people’s stories, people these days are inspired by these violent video games and they find killing people in real life as fun as killing people in real life. X. Bibliography -Bailey K, West R, and Anderson CA. 010. A negative association between video game experience and proactive cognitive control. Psychophysiology. 47(1):34-42. -Dye MWG, Green CS, and Bavelier D. 2009. The development of attention skills in action video game players. Neuropsychologia, 47, 1780-1789. -Swing EL, Gentile DA, Anderson CA, and Walsh DA. 2010. Television and video game exposure and the development of attention problems. Pediatrics. 126(2):214-21. -Cummings HM and Vandewater EA. 2007.

Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 161(7):684-689. -Hastings EC, Karas TL, Winsler A, Way E, Madigan A, Tyler S. 2009. Young children’s video game/computer game use: Relations with school performance and behavior. Issues Ment Health Nurs. 30(10):638-49. -Weis R and Cerankosky BC. 2010. Effects of video-game ownership on young boys' academic and behavioural functioning: a randomized, controlled study. Psychol Sci. 21(4):463-70.