Do Violent Games Cause People to Act Violently?
The relationship between violence in video games and violence in real life is a topic of constant debates that are based on the scientific and societal assumptions about whether violent video games influence players’ behavior, and, consequently, force them to act violently. From one side it is believed that violent video games have negative effect on health, academic performance, prosocial position and overall wellbeing of the gamers, and that is way cause them act violently. From the other side it is considered that video games, do not always lead to the negative consequences, and, sometimes, enhance creativity and develop teamwork skills of the gamers. In fact, numerous cases of gamers’ aggressive behavior, lead to the strengthen of the position against violent video games, especially in relation to the children and teenagers. As a result, Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), has introduced content rating system, based on which different video games have different type of age restriction. In addition, it is believed, that not only gamers’ age, but also gender influences probability of aggression in real life, since statistics shows that male are more inclined to play violent video games. Moreover, the more time person spent on video games, the less time there is to school work, house chores and health care, which leads to anti-social behavior, and, consequently to violence. That is why due to numerous scientific and societal arguments, it is believed that together with age, gender, and time spending on gaming, tendency to play violent video games is a risk factor of aggressive behavior.
First of all, the biggest part of the researches, devoted to impact of violence in video games on individual’s behavior, define gamer’s age as the main factors of influence, which consequently leads to the adoption of content rating system. Such situation is explained by the fact that children and teenagers are more subjected to external influence, than adults, whose attitudes and beliefs about violent behavior are already formed. For instance, “before age 4, children are unable to distinguish between fact and fantasy and may view violence as an ordinary occurrence” (Beresin). It is important to note that violence in video games affects both children and adults; however, normally, adults exposed to short-term effect, while children subjected to long-term influence (Bushman 348). As a result, Entertainment Software Rating Board introduced content rating system, based on which certain amount of violent content in video game, leads to specific age restrictions for gamers.
According to ESRB there are seven types of video games with different rating: Rating Pending, Early Childhood, Everyone, Everyone 10+, Teen, Mature, and Adult Only. The fist type is Rating Pending, or RP, which means that ESRB is not yet assigned a final rating to the game, and it appears only “in advertising, marketing and promotional materials related to a ‘boxed’ video game” (ESRB). The games with Early Childhood, or EC, rating are typically created for children whose age is three and older, …
