Why Teens Should Not Be Allowed to Play Violent Video Games

614 Words3 Pages
Times when children would spend their entire free time playing with peers in the streets have mostly gone. Modern children and teenagers prefer calmer forms of entertainment, such as watching television, or in a large degree, playing video games. Although video games can contribute to a child’s development, many of them, unfortunately, are extremely violent. , There are a lot of games propagating murder and violence, such as Gears of War, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and so on. They are popular and are being advertised everywhere, making teenagers willing to play them; the fact that are they marked by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) does not help much. However, considering the nature of such games, they should not be allowed for teens to play. For the human brain, there is no big difference between a real-life situation, and an imaginary one; this is why we get upset even if we just think about something unpleasant. For children and teens, which usually have a rich imagination, everything is even more intense. Virtual experiences for them may feel as real as their daily life; this happens due to advanced technologies, making computer graphics look extremely close to reality, and also because players take a first-person role in the killing process (often with the view “from a character’s eyes”). If they would just passively watch a violent game, it would make less harm than acting as a character that makes progress through a plot by murdering people and destroying what’s in the character’s path. This situation is negative, as a child’s or teen’s brain forms new connections every day–they actually learn and memorize what is going on in their favorite games (HuffingtonPost). Violent games directly reward violent behavior; many modern games do not simply make players kill virtual reality characters of other players online, but also grant them with scores
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