Saad 1
Roupen Saad
2013/5119
Dr. Rana Ebeid
Eng 102
November 19, 2014
The Negative Effects Of Violent Video Games On Teenagers
Research Outline
I. Abstract
II. Introduction:
A. Topic: Violent video games and their effects on teenagers
B. Historical Backgound:
a. The design of a computer that plays the game Nim in the year 1940.
b. The creation of tic-tac-toe, the first graphical computer game in 1952.
c. The creation of the game spacewar on MIT computers in 1962.
d. The start of the Atari company in 1972.
e. The invention of gaming consoles on TV’s and how they became popular.
f. The beginning of violent video games in 1980.
D. Research Question:
a. How do violent video games affect adolescents?
b.what are the negative effects of violent video games on youth?
c. How can the negative effects be prevented?
E. Thesis Statement:
Some video games may be educationally useful, none the less; the negative effects are more than the positive effects. Some of the negative effects may target a teenager’s psychological and social behavior and some factors help in fulfilling those effects.
III. Literature Review:
A. “I Wish I Were a Warrior: The Role of Wishful Identification in Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression in Adolescent boys” by E.A. Konjin et al.
B. “Short Term Violent Video Gameplay by Adolescents Alters Prefrontal Activity During Cognitive Inhibition” by Tom A. Hummer et al.
C. “Violent Video Games Induce an Affect Processing Bias” by Steven J. Kirsh, Paul V.
World War Video Games In Steven Johnson ’s essay “Games” (2005), he constructs his argument by saying that playing video games is no better or worse than reading, it is simply exercising different skills. What kept my interest in this short essay was the fresh take on the subject on how video games effect young adults. He addresses the audience knowing they will agree with his contrast of the two subjects or take it to be completely true. His explanation of it allows him to reach even the biased of readers to accept the rest of his argument.
A fallacy is the use of poor, or invalid, reasoning for the construction of an argument. In other words, it is an argument that makes an error in logic or assumptions that should not have been made. In the formal setting, an argument is two sides presenting their sides argument using logic and deductive reasoning. In the book “Writing Arguments,” authors John Ramage, John Bean, and June Johnson compare several fallacies. The authors describe the straw man fallacy as an argument when a writer constructs a misinterpreted version of an argument that distorts its original meaning and intentions in order to criticizes it as if it were the real argument (401).
In the last 10 years many things have changed in our life, especially after the electronic renaissance. Not only social media effects our life but video games do as well, many people believe that these games effects are bad to health, but many of these people think that these games can change people, make them go crazy or even killers, specially violent video games, they think that the game would turn into reality. Although they have point, a lot of people disagree with them. I think that video games don’t promote aggression even the violent one. The society has bigger problems to solve and comparing them to video games, I feel that the video games problem is a silly one, people kill each other because of the wrong polices, not a silly game.
The article “Do Video Games Kill” written by Karen Sternheimer responds to one of the most sought-after question; are video games the cause for “young killers”? (220) Sternheimer believes the influence of video games on today’s youth maybe spiraling out of control. She focuses most of the blame on the media, politicians and the Juvenile Justice System. Sternheimer suggests that there are other factors to blame for violent behavior: poverty, the neighborhood, unemployment, family violence, divorced parents and mental illness (218). While juvenile crimes have declined, and personal backgrounds effect actions, it cannot be proven that video game violence has no to little effect on America’s youth.
Romeo Vitelli, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in Toronto, Canada, cites “A new research study published in the journal Psychology of Media Culture takes a comprehensive look at different risk factors of violence, including playing video games. Whitney de Camp of Western Michigan University used data taken from the 2008 Delaware School Survey to assess violence risk in 6567 Grade Eight children. Students were asked about violent and pre-violent behaviour, i.e., “hit someone with the intention of hurting them,” “take some kind of weapon to school or to a school event,” and “carry a gun when you’re not in school.” “According to the study results, playing violent video games didn 't appear to be related to any of the violent behaviours that the researchers examined. For both males and females, the two factors most successful in predicting risk of hitting someone in the previous year were seeing or hearing violence at home and being high in sensation-seeking.”
Violent Video Games The culprit? While video games certainly have a decorated history of violence, they have been unfairly attributed for real life violence for way to long. Games with violent undertones have been in existence for nearly forty years. Attempts are continually made to focus on the violent effects that these video games supposedly have on players of all ages.
Social scientists have been specifically studying the influence of video games since the 1980’s. As time has gone on, video games have gone from harmless Pac-Man to games specifically made for killing people and remake a digital version of war.
What a great fun that I feel when I win a difficult video game, it is really exciting. It took me a very long period to forget the massage on the screen (GAME OVER ).But with the time I realized that Playing violent video games is no more likely to be damaging to young children’s behavior than those considered harmless, so that I choose some researches that can deal with case . More and more kids are playing video and computer games — especially ultra-violent ones that are top sellers. Research shows that children are also spending increasing amounts of time playing them: an average of 13 hours per week for boys and five hours for girls.
For many teenagers in our world today, playing video games may be a huge part of their daily lives. In contrast, many individuals think playing violent video games will not be safe for kids. However, research has shown that video games have solved some of science’s biggest problems. Teens could someday cure diseases. Also, kids who play violent games are being “exposed” to what war may be really like.
There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begins for their life.” ( 6) There are several ideas that say young people benefit from these violent video games “Surprisingly, playing video games can help our physical, mental, and emotional health.” It helps them to improve hand eye coordination and thinking ability. These benefits are not worth the risk of being influenced by violent video games. (7) All in all the research and officials say that violent video games affect how children, teenagers and young adults act.
The following research paper is about the detrimental effects which video, computer and Wii games have on children’s health. Upon analysis of this issue statement, the impact it has on children will be discussed to show how it affects the well- being of children. Support and refutation of the same issue statement will also be provided in this paper to provide evidence of the research findings in this context. Approaching the end of this paper, personal view point will also discussed followed by few recommendations which are given to improve health or well- being of children who are too much involved video games.
As television watching increased severely over the past half-century, it also became more violent. In 1969 the National Commission on the causes and prevention of violence indicated that ‘The preponderance of the available research evidence strongly suggests…that violence in television programs can and does have adverse effects upon audiences’ (cited in Berkowitz, 1993, p.199.) Since that time, television violence has increased largely. Research reports in 1970, published that children has seen over 11,000 murders on television by the age of 14. More recent researches and reports have demonstrated that now, the average child sees more than 100,000 violent crimes on television every year and about 200,000 crimes when they reach their teens.
Research shows that at least 83% of children in the US aged between 8-12 years are involved in video gaming once a month. This elevated number of video gaming has had its fair share of effects on its consumers. For instance, video games have positively influenced children to work together in completing various tasks, and often improve a child’s thinking capacity, especially through solving puzzles (Anderson et al, 2007). However, the contentious issue has been the effects of violent games on children, which are often negative to their well-being. In short, violent video games increase the aggressiveness of a child, and may eventually cause mental ill health.
In our time, technology has become one of our essential things in life; specifically video games. Video games are electronic system used to run games. They involve human interaction specially teenagers. Many researches have been done on the effects of video games showing that there is positive and negative impacts. As we know not all video games contain violent contents, but most of them are violent and mentally dangerous.
Does violent video game contributes to youth violence According to research, as 97% of 12-17year old kids are playing video games. The domestic video game industries earn about 21 billion dollars per year. More than half of best-selling video games contain violence scene. Now the violent video game has been blamed for school shooting, increasing the bullying, and sexual assaults.