Persuasive Essay – Video Games And Violence in Kids

The impacts of technological advancements in our daily lives keeps on expanding and increasing with the passage of time. Some of these developments include the internet and mobile devices which have led to increased popularity of the video games. Video games commercials and marketing can be very misleading and can steer guardians into buying too violent games for their kids, out of their range regarding age or wholly from the content displayed in the marketing advertisements. The essay will include the emphasis on the historical development of video games, how interaction with video games leads to violence behaviors in kids, the role of policy-making bodies toward the introduction of procedures to control video games and finally, analyze how video games have resulted in violent killings.

Over the years, the evolution experienced in video gaming industry is massive. The original invention of video games was in no sense, video at all. Instead of videos, texts created worlds for the players to explore. The first invention of these text-based video games being an adventure. A player could read the descriptions on documents of a cave and core in modest noun-verb instructions to traverse through the cavern to associate with the denizens. Later on, the adventure style advanced to a visual format. The new format of gaming included exploration, loot assembly, and simple mammoth struggling. The main character in the game had to be represented using a colored square like symbol due to the limitations on the processing power of the computer. Objects and monsters used in the game representation appeared in the form of original pixelated graphics, blades, and dragons (Belanger, 2017).

According to Belanger (2017), the technological advancements, supercomputers, and consoles that could deliver audiovisual and exploration games. Also, controllers gradually advanced into some of the present modern forms. The standard Atari pointing device consisted of a single button and a directional regulator. Existing consoles such as Xbox 360 plus play station 3 have controls with a directional pad or more pointing sticks and buttons that can combine to develop a large number of different player units. The personal computers gaming dominion, introduction of mouse and keyboard combination permitted an average greater quantity of player inputs. The advancements of video gaming developed from simple text based games to the most enhanced current video gaming that involves a lot of visuals with some including some aggressive representations of images equip kids with strange and violent behaviors.

Psychosomatic studies establish that video game plays links with violence and anti-social behaviors. According to some studies and opinion from policy makers, they understand that playing vicious filmed playoffs contributes to heightened hostility cases in teens and established adults and the scenario of cases of high school shootings. Even though, laboratory examinations can still not account for the analyses set from different scholars on the relationship between violent video gaming and aggressive traits. Precisely, neurological tests done cannot give details concerning the links between the behaviors and violent content. It is evident that these tests cannot handle the expected standards as per the conducted research hence, remains poor forecasters of adverse impacts of extreme cinematic sports on the entire society hence, ends up exaggerating the significance of these games (Ward, 2011).

According to Ward (2011), there exist different stories in the American history conducted during the 19th century regarding adverse impacts of violent games. According to (Comstock and Buckly 1983) on garish comic books and (Hadju, 2009) on present violent videos as cited by Ward, Americans have put a lot of efforts to eradicate the access of young children to violent media because of its leads to costly societal charges. These apprehensions on violent media may not be unsubstantiated by studies conducted to find media of all categories. Engaging into hostile related gaming corrupts an individual mind, and they tend to apply some of these violent behaviors in real life forgetting that they only exist in the gaming world. Hence, these games cause violent traits and crime activities that could not exist if young people failed to expose themselves to violent media.

The American Psychological Association via a combined force of experts assembled a study to appraise the information and policies concerning the impacts of the use of wild games and the possible adverse results. The association examined the existing collected works inclusive of the meta-examination in the field since two thousand and five reports of media violence traits. Because the recent analyses publication occurred in two thousand and ten reflecting works done in two thousand and nine, the association of experts conducted a search on the studies carried out between 2009 and 2013 (Calvert at al., 2017).

These teams of scholars established that exposure to violent games leads to increased cases of composite anger score, the rise in cases of aggressive actions, increases cognitions of violence, increased cases of desensitization and decrease in empathy. Hence, the task force came to a conclusion that violent gaming leads to adverse outcomes even though there was no enough evidence to examine any potential association between violent behaviors and video games containing violent content.

According to Ferguson at al. (2014), exposure to violent content corrupt the mental capacity an average person uses to think clearly. Due to the loss of humanness, these individuals tend to engage themselves in dangerous actions and some cases they do not even have a problem with taking other people’s lives. The research conducted an analysis of the impacts of violent content on children. They used three hundred and seventy-seven children which included sixty-two percent female and the rest from mixed ethnicity to try to evaluate the clinically high attention on the deficit and depressive signs on these kids. The results did not find any conclusive evidence on the link between violent videos and mental disorders, but yet, it violent content is not suitable for a stable mind.

Video games commercials and marketing can be very misleading and can steer guardians into buying too violent games for their kids, out of their range regarding age or entirely from the content displayed in the marketing advertisements. People should refrain from exposing themselves to violent content since it leads to negative impacts on their lives. Parents should control the amount and type of content their children exposes them into and also, the government should also introduce policies aiming at curbing the development of content with adverse effects to people.

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