Kids Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Play Violent Games Persuasive Essay Example

Did you know that over 85% of games in the world are violent? These violent games are becoming extremely common for kids to own. These games are resulting in kids getting addicted. In New York high schools they play an assassination game, Killer, as an annual tradition to celebrate the end of the year. Killer, a game revolving around assassination with a water pistol. All across America, there is a debate going on about whether kids should be allowed to play violent games. I believe that kids shouldn’t be allowed to play violent games because it encourages crime, harms the kids mentally, and influences hatred and disrespect to others. 

Foremost, if kids were to play violent games, it’d encourage crimes. The reason why it matters is that the assassination games may feel like a reward to them, which supports the idea of breaking laws. Because Killer is an assassination game, it supports “gang” violence. The students are sneaking up on each other to do a surprise ambush. A piece of textual evidence that Martin wrote was, “...he duped into coming to a party in the village.” (Martin, 2009, pg.1). This means that they’re also stalking the next victim, which is another violation of the law. In addition, Killer also encourages hacking. In this textual evidence, “The call had been engineered from a remote computer by a squad member with prodigious hacking skills.” (Martin, 2009, pg. 1). Not only are they breaking those laws, but they are also trespassing on private properties and breaking into houses to assassinate their next victim. Therefore, the game encourages them to break numerous laws to earn more kills. 

Furthermore, playing violent games can harm the victims mentally. Although others may contradict and say that they should be allowed to play video games because it can create friendships and encourage teamwork, as well as letting them learn to be wary. Yes, playing the game can teach kids to be aware of their surroundings, but it can also lead to them becoming paranoid. Kids may feel like someone is following them, and it can sometimes lead to fear. Therefore, they can start to feel unsafe since this is opening up the actual world. Also, it can make some of them fear living on their own and cause trust issues. In the text evidence, it states, “...school is the safe ground. And, keen as the graduating seniors may be to leave, the game tells them that the world outside is not.” (Martin, 2009, pg. 2). This piece of evidence also proves that some of those seniors might feel stressed and anxious about graduating as they have to face life decisions. Also, all the feelings they have dealt with during the game could be taken as an advantage to the person who is in charge of the assassination. Moreover, the victim's killer could play with their emotions, unaware that they can cause emotional abuse. A piece of text evidence is “...some kids occasionally sleep in the deeper recesses of St. Ann’s ...” (Martin, 2009, pg. 2), this shows that kids would sleep at the schools’ safe spots together because they didn’t want to be seen vulnerable.  

In addition, playing violent games can increase feelings of hatred and disrespect to others. Playing games like Killer can cause toxic rivalries between people because they might’ve been the person to kill each other, or they lost against them. Also, in the first few weeks of the game, it targets freshmen in the text Martin writes, “The first week kicked off with the upperclassmen’s swift massacre of the less disciplined freshmen team.” (Martin, 2009, pg. 1). Due to them only targeting freshmen at the beginning, it can create rivalries and grudges between the grades above them. Consequently, as they find out who their victims will be they could break laws like hacking and stalking to possibly use it in the future, to use it against them. The severity of the toxic rivalries can also end up in bullying or make the freshmen feel unsafe at school like St. Ann’s could potentially do. 

In conclusion, kids shouldn’t be allowed to play violent games because it encourages crime, abuses kids mentally, and can influence hatred and disrespect to others. Therefore, playing these games can ruin kids' futures and dictate decisions, and violent games don’t teach that if you were to make a decision there can be severe consequences for it as you grow older. For those reasons, Killer and other violent games shouldn’t be allowed unless the parents have agreed to it.