Example Of Essay On The Effect Of Violence In Videogames

Recent surveys have shown that 84% of American teens play video games regular. Many parents are at a loss, because they believe that active virtual life of their children interferes with their studies, inhibits the development of social skills and, most importantly - that games with elements of violence make teenagers act with cruelty.
Some researches show that teenagers who play violent games repetitively for an extended period of time are more prone to violent behavior than others, because continuously repeating a violent act serves as a perfect memorizing pattern. Moreover, children who played violent games at the beginning of the school year showed more acts of violence throughout the year than those who did not.
Despite the apparent logic of the claim that games with a lot of violence, for example, increase the level of aggression, scientific studies show contradicting results. The same with the influence on humans behavior and health. Also, a lot of research lately says about the positive effects of computer games, and media quotes them with pleasure. Although meta-analysis of a large body of research on this topic allows to conclude that while the link "violent" games and aggression in most studies is confirmed, some scholars totally disagree with this.
You can often hear the opinion that video games such as Mortal Combat, Halo and GTA contribute to the fact that teenagers are becoming more violent. However, a number of scientists have not been able to establish such a relationship. One study found no such influence, even on vulnerable adolescents. Christopher Ferguson and Cheryl Olson examined 377 children from different ethnic groups who had a clinical picture with higher rates of depression and attention deficit disorder. The researchers found no association between games and violent behavior or crime or cases of bullying children with similar problems. Moreover, several “vulnerable” children experienced a calming effect as a consequence of playing violent videogames.
Ohio State University study confirmed that those who play video games can perceive the world more frightening and dangerous, which in turn can trigger increased levels of aggression. Participants in the experiment were 70 graduate students. Within three days, some of them for 20 minutes a day spent playing aggressive fighting games with a high degree of violence, such as Call of Duty 4 and Condemned 2, and the rest was same time playing a non-violent game.
Immediately after the game session participants were invited to read the beginning of a novel or a certain story and suggest the further development of the plot and the actions of the hero. It was found that those students who played more violent games answered were more aggressively.
Another study involved 199 college students that were asked to play a Halo 2 - first-person shooter. Groups of participants were suggested to compete directly with each other - who can kill an opponent more times, or to compete indirectly - who could complete most of the game for a specific amount of time, complete the game together. Students that played the game without a purpose were a control group. As it turned out, a pair of players who have played the game together also showed a greater tendency for joint performance of tasks in real life.
Then, a similar experiment was conducted with groups of students, who were asked to play Unreal Tournament 3 in command mode. The results were very similar. What is even more interesting, when the opposing team was offered to combine efforts to perform some tasks in real life, the contestants were able to very quickly find a common language and cooperate, even faster than the former "allies".
Similar data obtained by other researchers. Violence in video games contributes to prosocial type of behavior when participants play in co-op games. In addition, the study discovered the fact that when participants played a game together with a partner - aggressive behavior decreased regardless of usage of different types of video games or of the contained violence.
Many experts fear that dynamic video games, the so-called shooters, for example, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead, are harmful to vision, but in the most recent surveys revealed that they, on the contrary, only improve it. Studies show that people who have passed their training with the help of video games, significantly improved their ability to distinguish between shades of color - from 43% to 58%. Each volunteer spent an average of 50 hours over nine weeks playing. After that, players who were playing shooters showed greater ability to discern close shades of gray, it improved by 43%, while those who played Sims, showed no sign of change
Thus, according to the results of different studies, computer games have a short effect on brain function by increasing the activity of those areas that are responsible for emotional arousal, aggression and pleasure in particular, and those that control, coordination and concentration. While there is no univocal answer to the question, whether videogames influence human behavior positively or negatively, we can state that violence in videogames cannot change a person completely, cannot make a human what it is not.