The Short Term Psychological Effects of Mature Rated Video/Computer Games on Young Children.

Essay by rsamburskyHigh School, 11th gradeA+, September 2003

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When one says video games are bad, in an emotional sense, and furthermore have no other comments as to why video games are bad, one would assume that video games are bad. Having heard no other opinion on the matter, deeming video games as bad would be logical reasoning. This was my first problem. I have neither read nor heard anything that would deem video games as safe in a short term scheme. So, to weed through all articles deeming video games bad, and deciding which articles held precedence over another, was, to say the least, difficult. Video games have come and gone, and I myself, a video game player, have noticed the continual and, what seems, gradual increase in everyday violence, not just in video games. When an article or person(s) states that the violence in today's media is getting out of control, I would agree, but conversely, that is exactly what articles and people were saying 10 years ago when the overall media was a lot less violent than what is deemed as violent today.

When choosing articles that I would deem relevant to my paper, I narrowed my search on more recent documents that seemed interested in proving the fact that there are hazards with playing video games, and what those hazards were. Out of those documents I have gathered a thesis for the basis of my paper; playing or observing violent video games is a cause of the increase in aggressive thoughts and aggressive behavior, and ultimately desensitizes young children to violence.

Video games were first introduced in the 1970's with game releases such as Pong, but did not become popular until the 1980's. 1 In an article written by a leading researcher in the field of communication, Gary W. Selnow, he states "heavy users of...