Argumentative Essay
In today’s economy, I believe that violent video games do promote violent and more aggressive behavior amongst our children. Parents need to step up and monitor what type of video games their kids are playing. You never know what type of effect the games can have on our children. All kid isn’t typically influenced by violent video games but we don’t know how our kids’ minds are. I read an article on The Shooting at Columbine High School and it portrays how two young teen went on a killing rampage killing fifteen students, one teacher, and injured 21 students. It was said that the Columbine massacre was the most deadly mass murder committed on an American high school campus. Arguments then came up on how violent videos games may have influenced this shooting.
Eric Harris, one of the two of the shooter was an “enthusiast of the Doom series” which was a violent shooting game. Harris had even quoted that “the killing was going to be just like the video game”. I’m not saying playing Doom was the sole reason he killed all those innocent people but it may have provoke their behavior a bit to do it. Most kids who play violent video games don’t actually go out killing people but these games can promote more violent and aggressive behavior. Dr. Phil points out that “violent video games don’t teach kids moral consequences”. In most violent video games you can do anything from killing innocent people, blow up buildings, even steal cars but there’s never any consequences the character has to suffer. In some video games you actually get points for doing these violent activities. This can build more aggressive behaviors in our kids.
At these young ages kid pick up off a lot of things and what they do in violent video games shouldn’t be what kids are spending their time doing. It also stated that “they do use more aggressive languages, they do use more aggressive images, they have less ability to control their anger and they externalize things in these violent ways”. People really aren’t seeing the effects these video games are having on our children. They can also affect out kids in the long run and turn them into more aggressive people. As a parent you should be trying to prevent this. As a child I played all sorts of violent video game but I never really turned into a violent person. I never knew the effects these violent video games can have on someone even if it’s just mild aggressive behavior. I read a couple articles about children and violent video games to do an analysis of myself growing up as a child. In my studies I came across how children turn their violence into aggressive behavior such as punching a wall, using my feet to kick something, or even throwing all out of anger. It is said that these video games can cause behaviors such as those and as a child I can remember doing all of those.
It had all started to make sense to me on how these video games can cause more aggressive behaviors among our children. As a child I can remember playing this game called Grand Theft Auto, and it was a very violent video games. I had killed innocent people, stole cars, and even caused riots all for fun. I wasn’t the type of child to commit these horrid crimes in the real world but I can say it did cause some mild aggression within. These types of problems can be treated if parents spent a little more time with their kids and take the time to see the type of video games their kids are playing. You can also help by limiting the amount of time these children spend on these video games. Different children handle things differently. If your child is becoming more aggressive after playing these violent video games, be a parent and take them away from them. Little steps like these can help better your child’s future.
Work Cited
http://www.drphil.com/articles/print/ArticleID=297
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/studying-the-effects-of-playing-violent-video-games.html?_r=0
