As an avid video game player I am constantly being told that the games that I play are having a negative impact upon me. However, I fail to agree, if you are talking about the relationship between violence and video games then I think I am more than capable of making a link between fiction and reality. Therefore, I decided to do some research and finally come up with a conclusion (if there is one). Apart from the violent video games that lead to violent behaviour debate, I will draw attention to more examples of how children are affected both positively and negatively. Most violent video games are 18+ and most people who play these games are not old enough to play. Sometimes it is that the parents do not know the age rating of the video game, so you can't blame the games or their developers, but rather the parents that let it happen and don't care what their kids are doing, so I think that the parents should be careful when buying these games. But I don’t particularly think it is the parents fault as most of the people who play video games are teenagers and they are able to tell the difference between right and wrong. Most video games are addictive, which makes an impact on people’s behaviour as perhaps at home when someone are meant to be doing their homework or revision they are constantly thinking of playing that game with their friends. This causes them to rush their work and put little effort into their homework.
Research
With late stress over mass shootings and gun violence in the United States, one of the inquiries that always comes up is whether violent media promotes violent behaviour. This is something that is particularly essential to consider for guardians, as explicit content is common on TV and in films, on the web, and in some of the most well known kids' video games.
Despite the fact that the issue is regularly introduced as dubious in the media, there is pretty good evidence that exposure to brutal media makes children more violent. In one of the most well-known studies on this topic (published all the way back in the 1960s), researchers showed a group of young children (6-7) a video of an adult playing with an inflatable doll. In the video, the children watched as the adult sat on the doll, punched it in the face, hit the doll on the head with a mallet, and beated it repeatedly. After watching the video, the children were brought into a playroom with the same doll and lots of other toys. As predicted, the kids who watched the aggressive video imitated what they saw—they beat the doll with a mallet, and they punched and kicked it. What was most surprising was that the children found new and creative ways to beat up the doll, and they played more aggressively with the other toys in the room as well. In other words, children didn’t just imitate the aggressive behaviours they saw; seeing aggressive behaviours caused these kids to play more aggressively in general (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963).
With the increase in mass shootings in America, this topic is always being studied and many studies have been done to prove whether or not there is a link between violent media and violent behaviour.
Researchers from Ohio State University brought pairs of 8- to 12-year-old children into a lab and showed them a 20-minute version of a popular PG-rated movie—either the Rocketeer (1991) or National Treasure (2004). In the edited movie, the children either saw that actual movie footage, which contained characters using guns, or they watched a version where the guns were edited out. They were then presented with a large room that contained various toys including Legos, nerf guns, and games. Not surprisingly, the children who watched the movie with the guns played more aggressively than children who watched the movie with the guns edited out, consistent with previous research.
But that wasn’t all; the study had a bit of a twist. The playroom also contained a closed cabinet, where in one of the drawers was a real 0.38-caliber handgun. The gun was not loaded, and it was modified so that it couldn’t fire bullets. It was also modified so that it kept track of the number of times the trigger was pulled hard enough that the gun would have gone off. The children weren’t told that there was a gun in the room, the researchers were simply interested in whether the children would find the gun on their own, and if they did, what they’d do with it.
Around 83 percent of the children in the investigation found the gun, and the vast majority of them played with it. Of the children who discovered it, 27 percent instantly offered it to the experimenter and the experimenter removed it from the room. Of the rest of the 58 percent of children who found the firearm, 42 percent played with it in different ways. importantly, almost none of the kids who watched the movie clip without guns ever pulled the trigger. The kids who watched the movie that contained gun footage were more likely to pull the trigger of the real gun; on average, they pulled it about 2 to 3 times, and spent 4 to 5 times longer holding it when compared to kids who watched the movie with no gun footage. What’s scarier is that some of these kids pulled the trigger more than a few times; in fact, they pulled it quite a lot. Some pulled the trigger over 20 times; one child pointed the gun out the window at people walking down the street; and another child pressed the gun to another child’s temple and pulled the trigger (Dillon, & Bushman, 2017).
However, on the other side of the argument an Oxford University study found that playing violent video games is no more likely to be damaging to young children’s behaviour than those considered harmless.
Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behaviour or school performance – and even then only slightly so. But it concluded that fears that a generation of young people are growing up with their development impaired by exposure to violent video games are no more likely to be borne out than previous “moral panics” over television and other media.
The study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, found that children who play online games involving linking up with other players were less slightly likely to have problems relating to other children than those who played alone. Equally those who mainly played solitary games generally performed better academically and were less likely to display aggression.But it concluded that any effects were small and that overall video games were at most a “statistically significant, yet minor, factor” in shaping children’s behaviour.
Researchers interviewed just over 200 children aged 10 and 11 about their playing habits including how long they spent each day and what types of game they preferred. Meanwhile their teachers were asked to assess the children’s academic engagement, behaviour and ability to deal with problems.
Two thirds of the children said they played video games every day – although boys were almost twice as likely as girls to do so. Around one in 10 said they played more than three hours a day, again a group dominated by boys. Overall those who played for less than an hour a day were less likely to have problems such as aggression than those who did not play at all.
But those who spend more than three hours a day displayed higher levels of aggression and were less academically engaged. “Taken together, this suggests that quantity may play a larger role than the quality of games played — a counter intuitive finding for many focused on the violent contents of some gaming contexts,” the paper concludes.
It adds: “These findings do not support the idea that regular violent game play is linked to real world violence or conflict.” It noted that previous studies potentially linking violent games with aggression did not always compare them with games involving similar levels of competition and difficulty.
Dr Andy Przybylski, from Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute, the lead author, said the fact that the study had not found evidence of a link between violent games and real-life aggression did not mean it does not exist but academics are divided about the possible effects.
“Some are of the position that there is no reason to believe that video games are any different from any other kind of media and then there are those who are very concerned,” he said.“But if you look at the evidence it looks like when violence is in some [other] form of media like film it actually might be much more influential for those who consume it compared to games.”
Opinion
Video games do not always produce negative impacts within individuals, we can argue this as a man recovered from a brain surgery through playing a video game. A man named Eric undertook brain surgery because of some problems undergoing in his body, as part of his recovery procedure, Eric’s doctors suggested for him to play online brain training games to stimulate his memory and speech again. Brain training games resulted to be exhausting for Eric, and he himself suggested to play ‘Destiny’ which is a video game in which the doctor agreed with. In doing so, Eric started to show positive results in his recovery through his love and passion of playing Destiny he was able to improve his memory and speech.
Another positive impact of playing video games is that most games require good hand eye coordination, Games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite are the games that most people are playing right now in 2018. Players need exceptional hand eye coordination where enemies lurk in every corner. Players aim to shoot enemies but they should also keep an eye out for other hostile players that might make sudden movements. As you carry on playing these games it causes your hand eye coordination to improve. A study was carried out of this topic by the University of Toronto to find out if people who play action video games such as Call of Duty have better hand eye coordination than people who do not play at all. They selected a group of people who play action video games and a group that have little or no experience to take a hand eye coordination test. The test was to keep the cursor inside a moving white tile. At the beginning the gaming group didn’t do any better than the non-gamers at keep the cursor in the tile. As they kept on playing, the gamers started to perform better than the people who don’t play video games at all. This could suggest that gamers don’t get good at a new skill straight away but they start to develop and get better over time.
In the past few decades there has been some crimes that are connected with video games such as: In 2013 a boy called Nathan Brooks was grounded for receiving detentions at school. Due to the detention he was also prohibited from playing video games so his gaming console got taken off him.