Violent Video Games Research Paper

1307 Words6 Pages

In the 21st century, adolescents are spending more time playing video games. Children between the ages of seven and 17 play for an average of eight hours a week (Gentile, Lynch, Linder & Walsh, 2002). Adolescents are exposed to numerous hours of playing video games and they become able to imitate the behaviors that they are observing because they are interested in trying to accomplish their mission within the average eight hours of playing video games. The video games that are being played majority of the time relates to a virtual world with violent imagery. The more adolescents engage in violent virtual video games of action and fighting, the more they may relate to these behaviors in reality situations such as those with their peers. Violent …show more content…

Goldstein stated (as cited in Krish, 2003), individuals who had a high need for sensation or arousal are attracted to violent imagery. The violent video game enhances excitement because people are dealing with seeing the violent actions occurring within the game. The body becomes stimulated, there is an increase in heart rate and the blood pressure rises because of rewards given for the completion of a task. The more that an adolescent engages with the violent video game they become excited in the situation, and having the assumption that their behavior is acceptable because adolescents are unaware of the consequences that can occur from playing the violent video game.
Violent video games can cause an adolescent to become more violent due to the amount of exposure that they receive and the connection to reality that make the game seem realistic. The behavior and the amount of exposure can have an effect on the person's realistic views internally and externally because they are more likely to have the perception that they are the virtual player because of the amount of exposure to the game and the imitation towards …show more content…

An adolescent would build their character to resemble who they are as a person, but their aggression would be more within the game because they have the opportunity to have a sense of being more physical, allowed to use weapons they are not permitted to in reality.
However, Walker stated (as cited in McLean and Griffiths 2013) one study suggested that videogame playing can be associated with risk behavior in late adolescence and young adulthood (18 to 26 years), with those who played videogames reporting higher levels of drug use, alcohol drinking, and poorer relationships with friends and family. The behaviors that adolescents are observing will continue to progress throughout their life because they will begin to assume that engaging in negative actions have no consequences because the video game does not display the opposing views of violence.
In other words, adults are a subject towards symbolic interaction because they purchase the violent video game for adolescents without the acknowledgement that the game can include violent imagery, foul language and inappropriate behaviors. Adolescent begin to spend hours playing a violent video game and mimic the action that they are observing without no supervision or control from and