Why Do Children Learn Effective Ways Of Thinking And Behaving From Violent Video Games

Violent Video Games: Preparation for a Violent Future Video games stand as one of the most common forms of entertainment for all ages. Andrea Norcia, an established writer for the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, proclaims, “Today, 97% of teens in the United States play video games.” These games come in a variety of genres, such as, action, shooter, action-adventure, adventure, role-playing, simulation, strategy, and sports. Unfortunately, children and teenagers favor first-shooter action games over strategic and sports themed video games. The article, “Life Lessons: Children Learn Aggressive Ways of Thinking and Behaving from Violent Video Games” reads, “Researchers say the majority of favored video games contain some type violent content (3).”

If a child hears his or her parent say an inappropriate word, her or she will repeat the word and think it is all right to recite the word to his or her friends. Similarly, when a child sees a character performing violent acts on another figure, he or she will repeat the viscous actions to school faculty, friends in the neighborhood, and even family members. Children who identify with a character are more likely to imitate the character’s actions (Norcia). The Social Learning Theory hypothesizes that if a child plays an aggressive video game, the stimulation of aggressive behavior will occur, i.e., children will imitate and learn from what they see on the TV screen (Griffiths

(Jaccarino). Moore then stole a police cruiser to make his escape, stating, “Life is a video game, everybody’s got to die sometime.” (Jaccarino). Moore was inspired by the game “Grand Theft Auto”, which caused him to make the decision to kill innocent officers and steal a car (Jaccarino). His actions were extremely similar to the violent game and prove how brutal games contribute to youth