The effects of violent images in television, movies and video games varies from person to person because some people are more impressionable than others. I disagree with John Davidson's claim that after the age of 8 children are not as affected by extreme violent viewing, such as movies like Saw or Hostel. I think the violent video games like Halo and aggressive movies middle school and high school age kids are exposed to still have an affect on their personality. Video games, especially, desensitize the kids to horrible and inhumane behavior like people getting shot or blown up. The point of these games is often to kill the most "bad guys" or people getting the way of you reaching your goal which can translate into real life, that killing people is not that big of a deal. I watched a Law and Order episode the other day and there were two teenage boys who killed two girls the same way they killed woman on their violent computer game. The detectives just had to keep playing the video game to know how and who they would kill next. Obviously, this was not a real life story but it is possible that could happen because violent video games are extremely popular with teenage boys. Parents should pay attention to what games their kids are playing and try to limit the amount of aggressive and violent behavior kids view.
3 comments:
I also disagree with John Davidson's claim that kids aren't affected by violent viewings after the age of eight. I have a younger brother who is twelve years old and he loves video games. Violent video games aren't his favorite, but he still plays them. I noticed a diffrence in his actions after he started playing games like Halo. He became more agressive with people, and started to pretend that he was shooting people. Some may look at this as an innocent thing and say it's just boys being boys and what they do is being violent. But it was not for movies and video games that are so violent, we wouldnt see these types of actions from children. When they are taught these bad habits froma young age, they build off of them and some don't learn to ignore what they are actually doing. These agressive behaviors shouldn't be accepted because it really isn't okay for people to act this way even if they are kidding.
i have very mixed emotions about the claims that video games affect the way kids behave. i do not play many video games now, but as a kid i played them alot more. I played a very small amount of violent games but i did like them. I was more into sports games. i see many kids now playing games like halo and call of duty(war games, killing games, shooting games) and i dont think that they are affected. i think that the true reason for the violence that kids show is because of cartoons like dragon ball z, and things of that nature. unrealistic fighting games, true hand to hand combat games cause children to be much more violent than war games. kids like to play fight enough as is, playing games like that, watching wrestling just makes the play fighting more intense. as kids grow up the play fighting turns to real fighting, and thats where things go way down hill. i think that anything kids see on tv is imitated, sports included, which i think is a good thing. When kids watch sports, they are encouraged to play them, and thats what kids should do, get active.
I agreee, video games have always had ratings for a certain age limit to kids and teenagers. I feel the age limitations on video games are good, but there are many older people who are still playing video games and to some they are mature enough to know that it is bad and they shouldn't ever do anything as seen on tv. But there are some older individuals who could as well as younger children and teens, be affected personality wise by these video games. Some video games a realistic and some unrealistic, but either way many of them include weapons and guns that can add a negative effect to their children.
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