Transcript Are video games dangerous?

Are video games
dangerous?...
By Jack ,Tom, Tom F, Oscar &
George
The case
Everyday people are playing
violent games such as:
DEAD RISING
Includes: fear, bad
language, violence.
Age:18+
Info: Basically survive
killing zombies by
using violence.
Call of duty 4:modern warfare
Includes: Violence,
bad language.
Age: 16+
Info: Technically it’s
tactics and killing
people on different
battlefields for every
mission.
GTA 4



Includes: Violence,
bad language,
nudity,
discrimination &
drugs.
Age 18+
Info: the 2nd best
selling game and
4th in the charts, it
is based on the life
of a rough
gangster on all the
series.
Safety first
Here are a few games which aren’t too devastating:
FIFA 08
Includes: Nothing bad
at all.
Age: 3+
This game has no
violence except slide
tackles this game is
safe for all ages.
Spore
Includes: Violence
Age: 12+
Info: Spore is a game
were you have to
create your own
monsters and world
Wii fit
Includes: no violence
nothing.
 Age: 3+
 Info this is great fun
for all the family, plus
you unlock new
games, yoga poses &
muscle workouts the
better you do.

The consequences
If we carry on this ‘extreme’ gaming it will
lead us in to catastrophic events. If you
don’t believe me just read the next
couple of slides…
The slides of truth
One of the most common medical problems connected typically to
playing video games is crooked posture, which appears as a result of
the irregular sitting position in front of a monitor or TV screen. There
is a huge percent of children in Junior High and High Schools who
have a crooked posture, and practically all of them frequently play
video-games. Children also frequently complain about the pain in
their hands, induced by hours of playing video-games each day.
Constant repetition of same moves can in time induce damage to
joints, and skin irritation. A boy recently ended up in hospital thanks to
the fact that he used his force-feedback controller seven hours a day,
which severely damaged his wrists, knuckles and hand nerves. Some
games also used to provoke epilepsy. Apart from this, one of the
possible problems that can arise due to intensive staring into the
screen is sight deterioration. Hours of watching the monitor (mainly in
darkened rooms) which displays rapidly changing pictures can impair
sight, and if the player already had a weakened sight, it can only
make the situation worse. This mainly goes for games which take
place in dark surroundings (which is most games for that matter). All
these problems only appear after intense playing; meaning that
reasonable playing with breaks cannot be harmful. In the last ten
years, the number of hours a child spends playing video games per
week increased from 2.8 to 4.3. Many children spend far more time
trapped in virtual worlds than ever before.
These physical problems can easily be made up for,
but the mental problems are there to stay. Parents
and psychologists all agree that the worst problem
about video games is violence. Violence has been
present in computer entertainment ever since its
start, and today, well, you can hardly imagine a
game without it. It is a sad truth that violence
became a part of our daily lives, from maltreatment
in the family, to the wars all around the world; but is
its presence so necessary in video games and how
harmful is it?
Why should violence in computer games be more dangerous
than the violence that can be seen on the TV? Because
video-games go both ways - they are interactive and cast
the player in the virtual world; they make the player
identify himself with the main character whose actions
have an influence on the plot. One of the greatest
problems here is that murder and violence performed by
the hero of the game are practically never punished, and
often even rewarded. This creates a feeling in children that
violence is right, and kids simply adopt violent behaviour
because they see nothing wrong about it. The interactive
element of the point-and-shoot video games lets children
practice their shooting skills, which eventually become
reflexes. Scientific research proved that children who
played violent games tend to be more aggressive than the
children who didn't. This, in combination with a number of
various sociological factors connected to the child's
upbringing can produce good conditions for developing an
extremely violent psyche.
Everybody probably remembers the massacre that took place in 1999 in
the Columbine High School, Colorado when two pupils murdered twelve
of their friends and teachers before committing suicide. Investigation
proved that the two of them were big Doom fans and that they used to
play this game every day. You cannot claim that the game directly
induced this (as many other kids had been playing it without killing
their friends and teachers), but it certainly had some influence. In the
Paducah case, a fourteen year-old boy killed three and wounded five
pupils in his school. He turned out to be an avid Doom, Quake and
Mortal Combat player. The most interesting thing about this case is the
accuracy with which the boy shot his victims - each victim received one
bullet, and before this, he never even used a gun. He obviously had a
natural talent for using firearms and a lot of practice in video-games .
In the latest case of multiple homicides in Erfurt, Germany, a boy killed
eighteen people in the school from which he was expelled. The boy
also turned out to be a player of violent video-games. Are those games
the main reason he did this? Probably not (in this specific case the boy
was no stranger to domestic violence and maltreatment), but there still
is a possibility that these games made him feel that he can do
whatever he wants, and get away with it, which was simply triggered
by the stressful situation when he got expelled. Though this doesn't
prove anything, as most of us can tell a difference between fiction and
reality, it is possible that persons with a potential for mental disorders
can be pushed over the edge by erroneous conclusions suggested by
the general concept of violent video games
So how do we stop the violence?
ESRB classifies games into categories depending on their
contents in order to prevent kids of a certain age to play games
of inadequate contents (violence, foul language, nudity, etc),
but this is certainly not enough as children find their way
around it. Most can be done by parents who can give their
children more attention in their critical age. This parental
attention, a good and reliable and loving family should keep
the increased level of violence in teenagers (which is quite
normal) from drastic outbursts. And this is in my opinion the
best possible way of prevention; far more efficient than
applying rigid laws made by people who are led by political
points and not by the needs of teenagers and our society as a
whole.
The finale
Are computer-games dangerous? There is no real
answer, but what we can reasonably conclude is
that playing video games is harmless if done in a
normal measure. Overdoing it could cause a
series of physical and mental problems which
combined with real-life problems can turn an
adolescent into a time-bomb. However, the same
goes for just about any activity in life that is
performed in a fanatical manner. You can be a
fanatical supporter of The Beatles and decide to
shoot John Lennon one day.
The end