For years and years there has been controversy over whether or not different types of media promote aggressive and disruptive behavior in small children. With the help from several different sources the answer has become apparent. Yes, interactive games increase violent behavior and may cause physical and mental health problems. With various information from an article in Newsweek, Pediatrics, a news story covered by CNBC, a couple different chapters from Violence In The Media, and a GameGirlz website, we see just how affective these games are and what is being done to prevent children from getting a hold of this knowledge.

In an article that was produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in November of 2001, it is stated “American children between 2 and 18 years of age spend an average of 6 hours and 32 minutes each day using media.” (Media Violence 2) This media includes television, videos, movies, video games, print, radio, computer, and the Internet. Most kids are in school for a total of 6 hours, this includes time for lunch and recess and if required naptime. So if you subtract the hours of the other activities, you find that kids are not actually doing one ac

Physical and mental health problems for children and adolescents can be associated with the exposure to media violence. Some of these concerns are aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, fear, and sleep disturbances. Research has provided that the strongest single correlate with violent behavior is previous exposure to violence. Children younger than 8 are uniquely vulnerable to adopting the behaviors and circumstances that exist in the media because they lack the ability to discriminate between reality and fantasy. Early studies show that the child-initiated violence may be more harmful than passive media. Experimental studies show that after playing video games, children decrease in helping behaviors and increase in aggressive thoughts. “Playing violent video games has been found to account for a 13 to 22 percent increase in adolescents’ violent behavior; by comparison, smoking tobacco accounts for 14 percent of the increase in lung cancer.” (Media Violence 2) Like many other harmful things, video games have been found to be addictive; repetition increases the games’ effect. (Media Violence 2-3)

The fact is that there is a variety of violence and sexual references in videogames and something needs to be done. Whether it is the industry itself or the parents, someone needs to have more concrete control over what children are getting a hold of and interacting with. Kelly Sumner, the CEO of Take Two Interactive says, “At the end of the day, it’s the quality of the game, the quality is absolutely amazing and the length of game play, you have about a hundred hours of game play in this game. You equate that to 50 cents an hour, that’s cheap entertainment.” (New Video Games 4) In this disturbing quote she is referring to more of the recent games, such as, BMX XXX and Grand Theft Auto III. It seems the motives of the producers are stronger than any others to stop the marketing of these vulgar video games. Hopefully, someone will put an end to all of this unneeded interaction and children will go back to playing kick ball and jump rope.

With this idea from the industry, it is clear that the money involved is too important to drastically change anything in ratings that will cause sales to drop. There are many controversies over why rating systems are and are not effective. One idea was to gather the publishers and parent groups to place one label on the games: N

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