After a hard day at school or at work, a typical teenage kid wants to do nothing but go home and play some video games. Xbox. PlayStation. Nintendo Wii. Gamecube. Nintendo 64. You name it! All children throughout the past decade have been hooked to at least one or two of these gaming systems. To kids, video games are the best and most exciting things in the world. They allow you to be people that you could never be and do things that you would most likely never do. However, in the real world, these video games are not as swell as they seem to be.

According to studies, there has been some shocking information stating that violent video games lead to youth violence. In 2008, ten out of the twenty top selling games in the US contained some sort of violence(Video 1). This shows how a lot of video games are based around gun-shooting, killing, and immature behavior. This is a negative consequence because young teens are becoming extremely exposed to violence at an early age which makes them violent as well. How does fake violence from video games and real violence correlate?

According to studies, it has been found that when a kids favorite character commits some sort of crime, they want to repeat that crime to be like them(Disadvantages 1). This would be the same concept of a child wanting to be like their favorite superhero or idle, they do the things they do to be like them. In this case, they would be doing violent things such as shooting or hitting others, which is obviously dangerous. Also, according to procon.org, “A 2000 FBI report includes playing violent video games in a list of behaviors associated with school shootings”(Video 1). The theory is that after playing these gun-related games, teens think that it is acceptable to shoot up schools, which obviously is extremely dangerous. Along with violence in school, it has been shown that “60% of middle school boys who played at least one Mature-rated game hit or beat up someone, compared to 39% of boys that did not play Mature-rated games”(Video 1). With those last two facts being said, it is quite obvious that the playing of these violent games creates an unsafe environment in middle and high schools, which is still a huge issue, even today.

Besides violence in schools, it has been found that violent video games that involve violence against women, has caused many negative images into teenager’s heads. Most games do not have women in them, but when they do, they usually are in the game for sex appeal. This causes the gamers to think as women as sex dolls or objects used to satisfy(Disadvantages 1).

Could these results be due to chance? There has been studies which show that this is no coincidence. In 2005, there was a study which stated that video games lead to P300 amplitudes in the brain, which associates with making people less sensitive and more aggressive(Video 1). Another study done in 2009 has concluded that after playing violent video games, it would take up to four minutes to have a child’s aggressive thoughts to return to normal(Video 1). This study also concluded that when blood was present in a video game, their arousal and hostility measurements increased(Video 1). A final study in 1998 showed that 21% of games involved abuse against females, causing an increase in violence towards women in the real world such as rape(Video 1). There has been many other studies and experiments which has led to the belief that violent video games lead to violent behaviors.

These experiments were well conducted and I believe accurate as well. There is always some slight possibility that it could be done by chance, but there are so many different studies that it seems unlikely. With that being said, violence in video games most likely correlates with youth violence.

Works Cited

“Disadvantages of Playing Video Games – The Effect of Video Games on Children.” Disadvantages of Playing Video Games – The Effect of Video Games on Children. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.

“Video Games ProCon.org.” ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.