Effects of Violent Video Games on Behavior

Video games can cause behavior problems

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Video games can cause behavior problems

Introduction

Video games do have an effect on people’s behaviors and can cause behavior problems on children. However, these effects have been found to be both positive and negative, depending on the type and content of the video game. For instance, violent video games and educative video games have different effects on people. Age is also a factor. Children are more influenced more psychologically by these video games than adults and this may lead to behavior problems if exposed to violent and highly sexual explicit video games with no control. According to Brad Bushman, a psychology professor from

Those who are exposed more to the violent video games tend to involve themselves in fights. Boys develop more aggressive behaviors than girls thus they get involved in fights more. Research confirms that the content of the game was more responsible in causing increased aggressiveness in children’s behavior, feelings and thoughts on both long term and short term basis (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). This means those children that were exposed to violent video games repeatedly for a longtime exhibited more aggressiveness in outlook, attitude, perpetual bias, belief and behavior. Boys showed more aggressiveness than girls. Those children exposed to violent video games have a higher risk of becoming violent in life. Games such double dragon and mortal combat which exhibit extreme violence and bloody scene has been accused of causing behaviors problems in most children. However, it was realized that sometimes this aggressiveness was not caused by violent video games but by other underlying factors such as psychological disorder, drug abuse, and

However, the effect can also be positive. According to Craig Anderson, research finding has shown that certain types of video games have been greatly imparting great skills, positive attitude and good behavior in the players (Anderson, 2006). Some were capable of teaching children healthy skills on how to provide self-care for the asthma and diabetes while golf video game showed evidently that student who used to playing it, improved on their ability control putting force in the actual golf game (Lieberman, 2001). This mean video games did teach people spatial, iconic and visual attention. Moreover, educational softwares showed significant effect on the improvement of student’s achievement. However, it is the content of the game that determine the result. Those with educative content influenced the players (children) positively in many ways while those with violent content resulted to aggressive behavior in the players. Video games have been identified to be powerful teaching tool and it effect on the people depends on the content of the games. Therefore, it is true that some video games can cause behavior problem in children. Parents should monitor the kind of video games they buy for their children (Lieberman, 2001). The amount of time in which a child is exposed to this kind of video games should also be regulated. Parent