Videogames and Young People
Videogames and Young People
Violent video games have been sources of extreme criticism over the past decade or so. With the recent advancement in video game technology, games are getting more realistic and are able to expose people to new types of content that wasn’t possible at the turn of the century. While this new content seems like a step forward, there is plenty of evidence showing that videogames are becoming an increasing problem to youth in our society. Ultra-realistic murders, brutal assaults, and rewarding thieves are just a few of the ways that videogames can perverse children and teenagers into skewing their ideals and morals for the worst. Video games in this decade have overstepped their boundaries of ideal non-violent, family friendly content and are now infecting the youth with these ideas that violence and aggression are the proper ways to act. Violent videogames need to be made more difficult to get into the hands of impressionable young people. This decade has seen an extremely controversial new game series rise to popularity and is right now the top game series in the world, the Call of Duty series. Last November saw the release of its latest iteration, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. This game was only available for sale for seven weeks in 2012 and in those seven weeks it became the top selling game for the year. Just behind it and being released only a week before, was the newest game from the Halo series, Halo 4.(VGChartz) These two games have outsold the next highest selling game not from either series by over 400%. This shows that a large portion of gamers are buying these violent games. Studies from 2009 have shown that up to 25% of the total population of gamers is children and teenagers younger than 18; as well as showing that up to 68% of Americans play videogames.(Entertainment Software Association) Using these two data numbers we can conclude that 17% of our total population is young children or teenagers that play
Violent video games have been sources of extreme criticism over the past decade or so. With the recent advancement in video game technology, games are getting more realistic and are able to expose people to new types of content that wasn’t possible at the turn of the century. While this new content seems like a step forward, there is plenty of evidence showing that videogames are becoming an increasing problem to youth in our society. Ultra-realistic murders, brutal assaults, and rewarding thieves are just a few of the ways that videogames can perverse children and teenagers into skewing their ideals and morals for the worst. Video games in this decade have overstepped their boundaries of ideal non-violent, family friendly content and are now infecting the youth with these ideas that violence and aggression are the proper ways to act. Violent videogames need to be made more difficult to get into the hands of impressionable young people. This decade has seen an extremely controversial new game series rise to popularity and is right now the top game series in the world, the Call of Duty series. Last November saw the release of its latest iteration, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. This game was only available for sale for seven weeks in 2012 and in those seven weeks it became the top selling game for the year. Just behind it and being released only a week before, was the newest game from the Halo series, Halo 4.(VGChartz) These two games have outsold the next highest selling game not from either series by over 400%. This shows that a large portion of gamers are buying these violent games. Studies from 2009 have shown that up to 25% of the total population of gamers is children and teenagers younger than 18; as well as showing that up to 68% of Americans play videogames.(Entertainment Software Association) Using these two data numbers we can conclude that 17% of our total population is young children or teenagers that play
Cited: “USA Yearly Chart.” VGChartz. VGChartz Ltd, n.d. Web. Mar 18 2013 Entertainment Software Association. Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. PDF file. Anderson, Craig A. Gentile, Douglas A. Buckley, Katherine E. Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents : Theory, Research, and Public Policy. Oxford University Press, USA, 2007. UNH ebrary. Web. 3/21/13 Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. UNH ebrary. Web. 3/21/13 “Did Harris preview massacre on 'Doom?” The Denver Post. 1999. Web. 3/21/13