Topic should violent games be banned from children

The article is about the effects of violent video games: What does the research tell us?. Kate Harrold has written the article related to Study Shows People Who Play Video Games Are More

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HO CHI MINH CITY

HO CHI MINH CITY INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, FINANCE, AND ACCOUNTING

TOPIC:

SHOULD VIOLENT GAMES

BE BANNED FROM CHILDREN

Instructor: Mr Dang Duc Dung

HCMC, 26TH DECEMBER, 2023

INTRODUCTION

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Video games are the "spiritual food” of the digital technology era, however, if not properly controlled and unable to master the time spent playing games, it will lead to game addiction, making players, children especially easily fall into a state of confusion and cannot escape Once children spend too much time playing games, it

is difficult for children to interact with citizens in life to form their personalities

In the contemporary era, there has been a proliferation of internet cafes, which are not only in urban areas but also in rural locations, tend to operate all day These establishments are frequented by individuals seeking not only to access information for working or studying purposes but also to engage in online gaming A huge ma- jority of these patrons are mainly children and teenagers who devote countless hours daily to games such as League of Legends, Valorant, to the detriment of their physical well-being and time management Their primary objective is to pay much attention

to excel and explore within the game’s universe Despite the majority of these games not being overtly violent, games like Mortal Kombat can influence their behavior, leading them to mimic the combative actions of the characters Moreover, children under 18, who spend a wide range of their time engaged in online gaming, tend to isolate themselves socially Their participation in group activities dwindles, and their communication with peers decreases, resulting in emotional isolation and feelings of loneliness This lifestyle may lead to apathy and insensitivity towards daily occur- rences and events

Playing violent games for a long time have caused many painful problems in to- day’s society First, it directly affects the psychology of children Playing games on electronic devices regularly will lead to a significant increase in the risk of developing psychological disorders, leading to feelings of depression, feelings of anxiety, insecu- rity, and reduced ability to observe and pay attention to one’s surroundings Not only that, if children are attracted to violent games, especially adolescents, it will have a direct impact on their consciousness Since then, this development has a tendency to form children’s personality and language in aggressive and violent ways, and easily become perpetrators or victims of violence Moreover, children will gradually become isolated, have no friends, easily become self-conscious and will take actions resulting

in suicide Second, it would have negative effects on the life skills of children To be more specific, playing such games will seriously affect the child’s skills, causing diffi- culty in communication and behaviors, leading to arguments with siblings or peers

Even more worrying, children are at risk of obesity, eye refractive errors, and related diseases

As for those problems mentioned above, this would lead to discussion in order

to determine whether violent games should be banned from children To be more specific, the findings of this thesis could provide educators, and parents with insights

to understand how violent games can affect those offspring in physical and mental ways In addition, it is considered to be a valuable source for those to have more per- spective about the development of children in physical and emotional aspects, leading

to increasing interaction between teachers, parents and their students and children Moreover, it is a useful reference for those adolescents, an age group whose cognition has not yet fully developed and being easily influenced by various external factors, especially in this case is violent games, to understand the both positive and negative effects of violent games in both online and offline way on themselves in the all aspects

of physical and mental health

This research article was created with the aim of conveying different perspective

on an old problem, but still of concern to everyone First of all, balancing between pros and cons is essential aim to avoid a one-side view Because of mistaken consid- eration, violent game was believed that it also brought negative affection to subject playing games Therefore, knowledge at positive and negative use of that type game will help out communities in variable sight Secondly, illustrating data relate to that sort of game will support viewpoint of parents have more diversity Traditional out- look could extinguish the advantages and potentiality in developing industry of video games In addition, the affection of violence in similar games that does not prove rising of criminal behavior as street fighting, murder, bullying in school More- over, excessive anxiety in almost group would prevent the development in video game industry

Chapter Ì

METHOD

The information of research that is assembled from another source The article is

about the effects of violent video games: What does the research tell us? 2019-2023

Gwen Dewar The research of psychologist Albert Bandura’s work in the 1970s which

name is 15 years of "consistently disturbing” Violent Video Games and Aggression

by Lauren Goldbeck and Alex Pew, National Center for Health Research Violent

Video Games Can Increase Aggression is researched by the American Psychological

Association’s (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in the April 2000

The Pew Research Center reported in 2008 SHOULD VIOLENT VIDEO-GAMES

BE BANNED? Which is conducted by Pranshu Paul Date: 6/8/2021 and the re-

search is conducted by ProCon.org Video games should be considered a sport is

researched by Consalvo et al., 2013 video games should be considered a sport by

Newman in 2008 Violent Video Games Should Be Banned by Glynn between 2002

to 2012

This report is from Brown University in in 2013 The article about pros and cons

of violent video games in June 29, 2018 by Louise Gaille 20 Big Advantages and

Disadvantages of Violent Video Games is the article was have written since May 25,

2019 by Editor in Chief Gael Fournis and Nidal Nabhan Abou have written the

article which name is ”Violence, Crime, and Violent Video Games: Is There a Cor-

relation?” in September 18, 2014 The research, led by Rolf Nelson, a psychology

professor at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass Video Games Could Boost Certain

Thinking Skills is the survey which is done by HealthDay News in Dec 24, 2009, 5:00

pm The research of National Literacy Trust that is conducted between November

and December 2019 for the video games survey Research of psychologist Rachel

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Kowert Research carried out by Marc Sestir, an assistant professor of psychology

at the University of Central Arkansas, and Jennifer Peszka, an associate professor of psychology at Hendrix College Kate Harrold has written the article related to Study Shows People Who Play Video Games Are More Likely To Be Able To Lucid Dream

in 12:15, 17 August 2022

Chapter 2

RESULTS

1 Advantage

On the one hand, it is believed that violent game is one of the reasons cause bully-

ing in school between students, and street fighting by individuals or group of badly

behaved teenager under 18 According to ProCon.org, playing violent video games

causes more aggression, bullying and fighting in 60% of middle school boys and 40%

of middle school girls who played as least one Mature-rated (M-rated) game hit or

beat up someone, compared with 39% of boys and 14% of girls who did not play

M-rated games A 2014 peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical

Association found that habitual violent video game playing had a causal link with

increased, long-term, aggression behavior Several peer-reviewed studies have shown

that children who play M-rated games are more likely to bully and cyberbully their

peers, get into physical fights, be hostile, argue with teachers, and show aggression

towards their peers throughout out the school years

An anti-bullying charity survey through BBC had been carried out in May 2017, the

survey has found that 57% of the young people which they had interviewed had their

own experience with online bullying while playing games A 16-year-old boy named

Bailey Mitchell had told the BBC he has had his own experience with bullies online

since he was the age of 10 Mr Mitchell said, "If you’re going to school on a daily

basis dealing with bullies there, you would want to go home to your computer to flee

from it” "If you’re getting more forms of abuse thrown at you, it will be off-putting

to do anything social” He also said, “it is very common to always have another player

within the game with a microphone or in chat to mention or say something abusive

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to you” The report found 47% of gamers which they had surveyed said they have experienced online threats while playing and 74% said the online bullying issue needs

to be addressed and taken more seriously

In addition, video games that portray violence against women lead to more harmful attitudes and sexually violent towards women A 2012 peer-reviewed study pub- lished in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that video games that sexually objectify women and feature violence against women led to a statistically significant increase in rape-supportive attitudes, which are attitudes that are hostile towards rape victims A 1998 peer-reviewed study found that 21% of games sampled involved violence against women, while 28% portrayed them as sex objects Exposure to sex- ual violence in video games is linked to increases in violence towards women and false attitudes about rape, such as that women incite men to rape or that women secretly desire rape Carole Lieberman, MD, a media psychiatrist, stated that The more video games a person plays that have violent sexual content, the more likely one is to become desensitized to violent sexual acts and commit them

Also, to confirm the aggressive behavior caused by violent games, a study involved

227 college students who completed a measure of trait aggressiveness and reported their actual aggressive behaviors (delinquency) in the recent past They also reported their video game playing habits It is concluded by lead author Anderson, of Iowa State University that students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behavior, besides, it is witnessed that there is association between amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college

Moreover, on the second study, 210 college students played either a violent (Wolfen- stein 3D) or nonviolent video game (Myst) A short time later, the students who played the violent video game punished an opponent (received a noise blast with varying intensity) for a longer period of time than did students who had played the nonviolent video game Furthermore, a 2010 review by psychologist Craig A Anderson and others concluded that the evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior Anderson’s earlier research showed that playing violent video games can increase a person’s aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior both in laboratory settings and

in daily life Anderson said that one major conclusion from this and other research

on violent entertainment media is that content matters Other researchers, including psychologist Christopher J Ferguson, have challenged the position that video game violence harms children While his own 2009 meta-analytic review reported results

similar to Anderson’s, Ferguson contends that laboratory results have not translated into real world, meaningful effects He also claims that much of the research into video game violence has failed to control for other variables such as mental health and family life, which may have impacted the results His work has found that chil- dren who are already at risk may be more likely to choose to play violent video games According to Ferguson, these other risk factors, as opposed to the games, cause ag- gressive and violent behavior

Next, there has an italian study experimenting violent video games and childre’s ag- gressive behaviors in 2015, with some authors including Luca Milani, Elena Camisasca, Simona C.S Caravita, Chiara Ionio, Sarah Miragoli, and Paola Di Blasio, it is also concluded that the study confirms the role of violent video games as risk factors for problems of aggressive behavior and of externalization in childhood and early ado- lescence Similarly, an article on National Center for Health Research is shown that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors, and feelings

in both the short-term and long-term Violent video games can also desensitize people

to seeing aggressive behavior and decrease prosocial behaviors such as helping another person and feeling empathy Also, in an article in Current Psychology published in

2023, it is refered that both reactive and proactive aggression scores were significantly higher in video game players with gaming addiction (GA), and there was no difference between players of violent games and players of non-violent games Additionally, it was found that the risk of being a cyberbullying perpetrator was higher in players of violent video games, and the risk of being a cyberbullying victim was high in players

of violent and non-violent video games who have GA

According to the approach of this article, we can see that there are many different fac- tors and risks leading to aggressive or violent behaviors This is shown quite clearly in the chart below (see figure 1) These may stem from a family with violent tendencies; playing with a group of friends who are aggressive, unruly, and violent; or frequent exposure to violent media and several other factors

Figure 1: Some longitudinal factors for youth violence

General Offenses Male Antisocial Peers Antisocial Parents Substance Use Low SES/Poverty Poor Parent-Child Relations

Low IQ Broken Home Abusive Parents Violent TY Violent Video Games

Adapted from US Department of Health and Human Services (2001), Bushman and

Overall, the chart above shows many factors that indicate children are prone to vio- lence However, this report only mentions violent games and violent television shows Looking at the chart, we can see that violent games and television programs account for a significant proportion in contributing to the formation of children’s violent be- havior in modern society So why are children increasingly exposed to violence from such media? Is it because parents are so busy with work that they forget to take care

of and talk to their children? Or do bad children entice and entice good children to study and follow their bad habits and habits? In any case, the rate exceeding the threshold of 15% is a very worrying thing in today’s complex social situation Will this number stop at this level or will it increase further? No one can predict it and what needs to be done is to keep it at a stable level or reduce it slowly

There is one thing that is truly absurd, which is that innocent children had to die because of the wrong actions of an individual with an unstable, negative mentality who was influenced by the violence of a game electronic This is a true story, based

on the shooting of Jared Padgett According to Glynn’s research, within a decade, from 2002 to 2012, 28,000 innocent children were murdered, with the perpetrators being teenagers using guns due to neurological disorders from haunting images from violent games Another study by Glynn also showed that 70% of murderers are ad- dicted to video games From there, it shows that violent video games have a certain relationship with current crimes

However, many studies have confirmed that the connection between violent video games and people being violent in life is unrealistic Many studies have shown that there are many problems beyond our control that make children increasingly violent For example, family medical history or unstable mental health In addition, there

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