Video Games in USA (Essay Sample)

Video Games in USA
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The problem that I would like to address is the impact of video games on children in the United States of America. Video games play a role in influencing the general social behavior of young children or players. For instance, some video games have an influence in sparking bad behavior (criminal behavior) among the children. Hostile aspects in a game contribute to most of the unpleasant acts that are always visible in children. This disrupts the relationships among the family members leading to irresponsible individuals in the society.
Moreover, spending lots of time in front of a computer is associated with a number of medical effects which are harmful to the health of children due to addiction. Addiction can lead to obesity among children who always spend most of their time indoors and spare no time for outdoor games. Outdoor games are healthy for children because they tend to provide sufficient relaxation and full exercise of the brain, body and mind for those children who are still undergoing bodily development.
The strain that result from prolonged exposure to televisions or rather computer screens’ radiations have a significant number of effects on children. The most common problems that arise here are change in lifestyle and eye complications among other problems (Katie & Zimmerman, 2005). Older children transform their lifestyles in cases of addiction to such games whereas eye complications apply to both young and old children.
To solve this problem of addiction, parents should increase supervision in a way that when the children want to acquire a new game, they should filter the type of content or rather the rating of games. In addition, parents should use parental control to regulate children’s access to games that are addictive and might enhance development of poor behaviors among children.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS REPORT
The Impact of Video Games on Children in United States of America
Problem definition
The virtual environment that is created by video games is crucial in establishment of a spatial presence. However, the impression of the entire earth as created by games has no direct relationship with real circumstances and actions that take place on the earth. The violent plans of actions that are shown in various game scenarios are not real thus, when practiced in the real life situations, there might be horrendous consequences to the individual involved in the action and generally the society. Therefore, video games involve retention of memory as it is done in classrooms but it does not substitute the ideas and knowledge that is obtained from class books and other learning processes at schools (Gee, 2003. p.104).
The success of video games is associated with the level of active control in players. This enables the player to make decision on the type of action that can be taken in order to fight the situations which offer uneven control and confidence that might urge the children to enact the same way in the real life situations. In addition, the points that are gained in violent games that involve killing of people through shooting tend to glorify the kind of violence shown in games. Thus, addiction to computer or video games most of the time leads to arising of anger between parents and their children in a case where parents are extremely strict and hard on their kids.
Parents have expressed their concerns on the general impact of video games on the social and psychological behavior of children. A number of these games have parental control hence parents can easily control every step of play. However, recent researches have proved that only twenty percent of parents try to exercise their parental control over the purchase and playing of video games (Wills, 2002. p.15).
Problem Evidence
The correlation between the violent incidences such as violent attacks from teenagers and interaction with violent games has not been established. However, there is a significant increase in insensitiveness and vocal abuse towards crime in a number of cases. Thus, from the American health association, various researches have proven that the total time spend by children who belong to a quite low social and economic class play games five times more than those kids from the richer and educated families or societies. Here, education is the judging factor, but not money.
Causes of the problem
Like any other forms of media, video games are a major topic that is frequently under controversial discussions and censorship. This is as a result of graphic violence, use of illegal drugs, spread of sexual themes, propaganda, consumption of tobacco and alcohol and profanity in various games (Wills, 2002. p.15).
There are various parties that seriously criticize video games in the society (among children). They include parents, organized religious groups, politicians and other organized religious groups. These parties have accused several games of causing an irreversible addiction alongside extremely violent behavior amongst children in the society.
In addition, a question of age has been arising whenever this issue of games is being discussed. Video games addiction has been in existence for so many years now, beyond the remembrance of current young children. There is lots of violence in media systems such as televisions, movies, music and video games. This violence greatly affects children. It is extremely pronounced and open that the video games tend to teach many young people the weapon-related skills and influence the way they react to their colleagues.
Consequences
Playing many video games that are violent is associated with the general aggressive feelings, behavior and thoughts in children. Furthermore, these violent games are related to the act of young children being unwilling to help and show some caring attitude towards their colleagues or rather their peers. Most importantly, researches have shown substantial evidence on this not happening to non-aggressive children alone.
In addition, children who are fond of playing violent video games are hostile and in many cases, they enjoy arguing with other kids. However, those children who spend less than ten minutes to play a computer game tend to be more aggressive in a short while immediately after playing as compared to those who play for a couple of hours (Witheford & Peuter, 2009. p.30).
Video games involve parts or rather sections whereby children repeatedly enjoy the recurring incidents of violence within the games. The violence in the games might be harmful as compared to the type of violence watched from televisions and movies. In video games, violence is made more realistic since there are rewards for every violent act.
Video games have various ratings that indicate when and where mature sex themes are used, presence of violence, strong language and other irrelevant content for children. These ratings indicate suitable games for children in various age groups. For instance, when selecting appropriate games for children and adults, ratings are extremely crucial when taken seriously.
Table on game popularity and content description
Game rankGame Number of children Game content descriptionGrand Theft 242Intense violence, strong sexual content, drug abuseMadden 189No descriptionHalo 154Violence and shade of bloodTony hawk90Use of alcohol, blo...