Effects of Violent Video Games on Young People

“Studies of children exposed to violent media have shown that they may become numb to violence, imitate the violence, and show more aggressive behavior.” (Video Games and Children: Playing with Violence). Video games range from numerous categories from Sims, which is a family game, to Grand Theft Auto, which is a violent video game. Violent video games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty encourage bad behavior and even violent actions. While video games are fun and time consuming, violent video games encourage vicious behavior because the longer people play video games the more aggressive and violent they become, more exposure to video games teaches people to view the world in a more brutal way, and age is a huge factor in behavior because kids and teens are more influenced by video games than adults.

There are many key factors that show how the media influences people, but the biggest form of media that influences people in a bad way is violent video games. “...kids who played more hours of violent video games per week revealed increases in aggressive behavior and violent tendencies, compared to those who played fewers hours a week.” (Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive). The more people are surrounded by something negative for a long time, the bigger the negative thing affects them.  “The more long-term gamers were also more likely to fantasize about hitting someone they didn’t like.” (Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive). In violent video games, the video game characters act in violent ways such as hitting or killing other characters in the game. It makes sense why people who spend so much time on the game get violent ideas like that. The longer people are drawn to play violent video games, they get used to the aggressiveness of the games, and act out because of it.

Presentation to video games makes people see the world in a more horrendous manner. The virtual world looks so much like the real world and the gore in video games is so life-like that some people cannot tell the difference between what is real or not causing people to act in violent ways in real life too. “What this study does is show that it’s media violence exposure that is teaching children and adolescents to see the world in a more aggressive kind of way…” (Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive). Anybody from children to adults can view the world in any way depending on what they are surrounded by including the media.  The world isn’t perfect and it isn’t good or bad, but violent video games can change the way anyone thinks of the world. Such as showing people in video games that it is necessarily “okay” to shoot people and kill people in the game when it isn’t anything close to okay in real life.

Children and adolescents are more affected by rough computer games than grown-ups. “... children tend to act less aggressively as they get older, and learn more mature ways of dealing with conflicts than lashing out.” (Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive).  Since children are learning and growing up and have so much to learn before they fully become an adult, they look at things more differently than adults do. Children playing video games isn’t a good thing at all because they are getting affected more than adults do and will look at the world like a video game because they don’t know the difference between the real world and the virtual world. Playing violent video games can make people’s behavior bad, but can also make people antisocial. Being antisocial as an adult can make people miss out on huge opportunities and can change the way people act too. Age matters a lot for anything, but playing violent video games at such a young age can change people’s behaviors in a tremendous and horrendous way.

Whereas video games are harmless and are fun, violent video games encourage bad behavior given that children are more influenced by violent video games than adults, more exposure to video games teaches people to view the world in a more vicious way, and the longer people play video games, the more aggressive and violent they become. Exposure to violent games at a young age can alter people’s behaviors in such bad ways such as changing the way people view the world. Violent video games shouldn’t be played by a younger audience due to the fact that they are so young and shouldn’t be exposed to such a gorey and dangerous virtual world.