The Effect of Violent Video Games on Kids
Throughout all of the years that video games existed many people have said that all of the violence in video games has an effect on kids. I am going to begin by studying the amount of time kids put into these games opposed to other things. As well as the parental factor of this topic. All of this just to see if video games do have a negative effect on kid's grades in school physical fights or attitude.
According to the NPD group there are two types of users heavy and light. Light users consist of kids that play games for about 5 hours. While heavy users play anywhere from 6 to 17 hours. The NPD group also stated that once the kids reach the age of 6 to 8, that's when the kids change into a more serious gamer. The kids at the age of 15 and 19 are the super users.
A typical retail display (in Geneva, Switzerland) ...
Barnstar for WikiProject Video Games.
English: Virtual camera system demo showing parame...They are the ones that spend most of their time playing games online rather than offline.
The difference between online games and offline games is that, when a kid plays offline that kid is now only exposed to the words and action of the software in the game. Unlike the gamers that play online they are exposed to the language of other players also to some of the rudest actions such as t-bagging, which is not under the rating that the company manufactures of the game have given to their product.
Which leads me to the great role that the parents play in this world? Every game out there has a rating; there are different ratings for each game depending on the violence, blood, language, and actions in the game. The different ratings are Ec: which is for early childhood, E10+: This is for every kid that's 10 and older, E: means that the game is for everyone, T: Means for teens, M: means mature for kids 17 and older last is A: which means adult only for people of years 18 and older. These rating are on the front of every game yet most parents do not even bother to read it or just simply don't know what it means. This causes the kids to come in contact with a violent game at an even earlier age than they are supposed to.
A number of studies have shown that kids in any grade that spend more time playing games have poorer grades in school. Others have documented that the content of the games being played have no importance on the persons grades just the exposure (Anderson & Dill, 2000;Paschke, Green, & Gentile, 2001). Although the type of video game doesn't play a factor in the persons school work it may play a factor in the person's aggression. Content analyses of video games show that as many as 89% of games contain some violent content (Children Now, 2001), and that about half of the games include serious violent content towards other game characters (Dietz, 1998; Children Now, 2001; Dill, Gentile, Richter, & Dill, 2001).
A meta-analysis by Anderson and Bushman (2001) found that across 54 independent tests of the relation between video game violence and aggression, involving 4262 participants, there appears to be five consistent results of playing games with violent content. Playing violent games increases aggressive behaviors, increases aggressive cognitions, increases aggressive emotions, increases physiological arousal.
However it is said that violent games do not play a major role in fighting. The person's hostility is the major factor in that everything else is just a helping hand. As to where I stand in this topic of video game violence, I believe that if parents paid more attention to their kids the violence will go down and school grades will go up.
References
Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353-359.
Dill, K. E., Gentile, D. A., Richter, W. A., & Dill, J. C. (2001). Portrayal of women and minorities in video games. Paper presented at the 109th Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA, August 2001
Paschke, M. B., Green, E., & Gentile, D. A. (2001). The physiological and psychological effects of video games. Poster presented at the 36th Annual Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference, St. Paul, MN, April 2001.
6th British Academy Video Games Awards
English: Example of 4:3 HOR+
English: ESRB "Everyone" rating symbol, displayed ...