Impact of Video Games on Teenagers

I was searching some information of the impact of video games on teens and I found this page that has a lot of information. The page talks about some studies that universities and hospitals have done. The general result shows that when teens play bloody and violent they can behave like if they were that person in the game. Many children reveal to their parents and teachers if they say that video games are bad because they are vicious about them. But not all the video games are bad for people, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) shows that some games help people with computer reading, solving problems, and motricity. The ESRB rates video games according to their content. The rating method is: Early childhood (3 and more years), everyone (6 and more years), teen (13 and more), mature (17 and older), and adults only (18 and older depending on where the game is sold). One of the major causes of increasing teen violence is that there are more violent games and more children allowed to play them a lot. More studies about the subject have said that boys play more videogames weekly than girls. The author of the article said:

Video games also encourage players to identify with and role play their favorite characters. This is referred to as a "first-person" video game (Anderson & Dill, 2000, p. 788) because players are able to make decisions affecting the actions of the character they are imitating. After a limited amount of time playing a violent video game, a player can "automatically prime aggressive thoughts" (Bushman & Anderson, 2002, p. 1680). The researchers concluded that players who had prior experience playing violent video games
responded with an increased level of aggression when they encountered confrontation (Bushman & Anderson, 2002).

The worst part of the violence in video games is that sometimes the children stay violent forever. It is easier that small children are influenced from this violent than teenagers or adults. The children of today can become violent by watching their older brothers and sisters play violent video games that are not proper for small children. Some times the industries that make video games make campaigns to promote their video games, and many children see that and they would like to have them.

When children and teens have video games and they play them a lot, it will be very difficult to take the video games away from them. This are some tips for parents worried about their children playing too much video games or not proper games for them:

• Know what is the game about and if it can affect your children.


• Watch your children playing the game and think if it is good for your son or daughter.


• Talk with other parents to talk about video games.

I think that parents should never take away their children's video games because it will cause the child to become very sad, and they will be very bored. I also think that there is a good part of video games that can be better than the worst parts. The games can bring motricity to children and use of technology in their lives and that is important in these days in which to get a good work it is very useful to have a good control over technology and not the tech controls you. I think that not all games are bad. Some games have other languages or mathematics or something like that that the children can learn at school and playing the game.

I would like to learn about what things can influence children and teenagers to play video games.