Are Violent Video Games Causing Children to Become Aggressive?

Are Violent Video Games Causing Children to Become Aggressive?

Introduction

Violence in video games is becoming an increased issue as it is causing the children of our society to become more aggressive. The issue of increasing aggression with more time spent on playing violent games has been debated since long. Video games have been taken a number of times in media. The media blamed several times that the gaming industry is responsible for violent behavior of children. The debate about whether violence in video games is a little different than the one on video and TV when it is the player himself who is in a situation where he or she is in a situation where he or she performs all actions (Gentile & Stone, 2005).

According to the Oxford Dictionary, violence can be defined as the behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. Many researches were conducted related to this issue, but it was seen that no proper outcome was achieved of the issue. There has been noted a different attitude of the children playing violent video games continuously (Douglas & Craig, 2006). Violent video games can make us more aggressive, reducing the capacity for empathy, and make us more dulled the sufferings of others. Impulses of aggression and violence come from the limbic system of the brain. During childhood and adolescence established impulse control over these systems from the frontal lobes. We believe that there is a great risk that such control is not fully developed, while automatic aggressive reactions amplified. Habituation and desensitization of the individual's impulse control leading to increased risk of aggressive behavior in conflicts (Thomas, 2004).

Background

One of the key elements that have continuously been raised against video games is that the majority of the games contain violent elements. The risk of being affected by these games depends on the amount of play and the amount of violent content. Thus, it is disturbing some young people who play extremely violent video games for several hours a day (Patrick & Charlotte, 2010). But from the perspective of brain research, we are most concerned about children and young people who already have a psychiatric disorder, such as ADHD, borderline and antisocial symptoms. These children are lagging behind in the maturation of control and often a lack of impulse control.

According to experts, it has been found that there are children, who are not impacted much by such violent games, but continuous exposure to violent video games might cause problems for the children and their attitude will change. It is important for the people to understand as to how video games might impact the children and how their daily activities will be affected by them (Gentile & Stone, 2005). According to a persistent group of researchers at Brock University in Canada, there is indeed a link between increased physical aggression and aggressive teenagers playing games. The team, composed of psychologists, published an article in ...