Video Games and Juvenile Delinquency (Essay Sample)

Video Games and Juvenile Delinquency
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Video Games and Juvenile Delinquency
Video games have become the best entertainment choice for many young children and adolescents all over the world. Nearly six in ten homes with children have personal computer and video game machines in most developed countries. The influence of violent video games has recently become a major research focus and many researchers have taken pretty good time studying the relationship between video games and their effects on juvenile delinquency. Psychologists argue that children are more vulnerable to behavioral influences when they are participants in the video games unlike when observing (Kirsh, 2006).
Firstly, we live in a world where media is affecting everything we do right from dressing, talking and even how we carry ourselves. It’s just evident with the "monkey see, monkey do" theories that we are imitating everything we see on the media and making it part of our lives without knowing the consequences of such deeds. The same is applying to young children and the video games they take almost the whole day playing. If a child spends endless hours on the video games what else should we expect if not the child imitating the game’s characters, the unconcerned brutality, hair-trigger temper and cartoonish boldness. Iowa state university researchers say there is a strong link between violent video game and youth fierceness and delinquency (Unsworth & Ward, 2001). Hitting teasing and name calling are some of the effects that come up after too much exposure on violent video games (Gentile, Anderson, Yukawa, Ihori, Saleem, Ming, Shibuya &Sakamoto, 2009)
Other controversies about the effect of video games include the portrayal of female as a weaker sex and many video games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas allows the player to simulate sexual intercourse with the main character’s girlfriends. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters have been portrayed in some video games. Some games like Grand Theft Auto series, Custer’s revenge and Def Jam portray of racism which can influence young players about race and urban culture (Wikipedia, 2014).
However, many factors accompany the influence of video games on the children and critics of the matter say that the influence of video games also depends on how the children are antisocial, their sex and their age (Gentile et al.,2009). After intake of media violence, in this context violent video games, the adolescents increase their hostile conduct tendencies because of some factors. For instance, their aggressive thoughts increase which in turn increase the possibility that a trivial or indefinite incitement to them will be deduced in a very aggressive way. There is an increase in overall arousal which is likely to increase the dominant behavioral tendency. The juvenile in turn engage in various delinquent behaviors often at high frequencies and on the other hand struggle with their competencies in school, family and work demands.
In conclusion, the effects of video games on juvenile behaviors call for much attention especially from the parents since they spend more time with their children at juvenile stages. The fact that there is so much misinformation about video game exposure on the behaviors of children has mad...