Almost every child enjoys playing video games as it acts as a source of entertainment. However, as time passed by vicious contents are now being portrayed through gaming that dehumanizes children and encourages in promoting violent behavior. Parents may sometimes struggle in handling severe aggression of their children as it often makes a situation worse. According to some people gaming is a normal fun activity with no harmful impacts but with time this has effected children’s behavior and affected their personalities. Often during teenage period, children are quick to adopt learned behavior as their body and mind are undergoing numerous changes. Violent video games make players internalize anxiety, increase aggressive attitude, imitate their most liked character and cause severe physical impairments.
Video game are extensively played in majority’s childhood and has influenced behavior of children by reconstructing their thoughts, actions, preferences depending on the intensity of video games played by them. Gaming is a high rated obsession of every individual as it is a good source of time pass. Back then, it was played for fun purpose but unfortunately with the passage of time children started to adopt negative behaviors from these and implemented them in normal life. Violent video games are causing many people to develop aggressive attitude against others, losing the feeling of helping others or showing empathy.
Exposure to violent video games negatively affects teenagers; it increases aggressive behavior and related thoughts or feeling. Violent games in which characters are abused, murdered brutally, physically harmed should be prohibited as such games will escalate violent behavior and have a negative impact on their moral development. According to the journal of medical association, games have a strong negative impact on children and adolescent’s developing minds. More brutality and hostility were generated by these gaming activities. When a child in the video games is constantly witnessing violence, blood and murders, it leaves a certain mark on his psyche. Such a child would be more likely to take aggressive action against his family or friends and get involved on arguments without logic that harms their peers.
Teenagers learn to imitate characters and associate violent behaviors with pleasure of achieving rewards by harming others; this may erode moral codes of conduct. Some researches referred to this term as “Game transfer phenomena” where gamers adopt visual imagery contents and associate it with real life, this later results in non responsive behavior of children with family and surroundings. Under simulated conditions, emotions are triggered by violent attitude and encourage teenagers to harm others for their own satisfaction. According to researcher Matthew de grood, a 9 year old boy who frequently played ‘Halo zombies’ game, killed five college students stating that he thought they were zombies. Thus, video games can be habit forming as it gives immediate reward for learning and adopting negative behavior of characters.
Children becoming highly addicted with video games suffer from physical impairments. This is when they spend excessive amount of time on gaming that delays physical development of body as a result leading to serious and permanent psychological mental effects. The author of “Reset your child’s brain” Dr. Victoria Dunkley reports that when children play games their nervous system is in flight or fight stage, it releases dopamine and adrenaline in your body that can be dangerous as it can increase risk of heart attacks in future. Another therapist reported that there has been an increase in medical prescriptions for unfit or obese children who refuse to participate in outdoor activities. These can deteriorate health and result in chronic adrenal fatigue and auto immune diseases due to lack of performance in health activities, not only does it results in disorders but also depression, stress, diet and sleep imbalance as the gamers hardly have any social or healthy lifestyle because of their addiction towards video gaming.
There have been unwitting claims made by media about video games that are violent and involves abusive language; they consider shooting to have a link with murder and aggression in real life for the love of video gaming. In contrary, according to some researchers playing violent video games is a form stress relief. It also improves your memory, communication skills, built team work and spatial – solving skills. Though it had been a hard time drawing the line between cause and effect but violent video games are not the only reason for negative personality of children, there are many other factors around that influence behavior and also it depends on the level of intensity of video games.
In conclusion, violent games should be banned as it results in concomitant rise in violence and aggression and reduces pro social attitude. Children associate violence with enjoyment and normalize this behavior in the environment. These gaming activities have more negative effects than positive ones. Immense numbers of children playing video games are becoming addicted and spending majority of their time in gaming that not only ruins their social life but also has a bad influence on them and affects their health. Moreover, the parents need to understand that they should supervise their children, adopt a good behavior towards them by teaching them moral values and engaging them more in other alternatives such as travelling, family quality time, movies, reading, arts and sports.
