The Effects of Violent Video Games on Today's Youth.
Violence in today's society is getting out of control. As crime rates rapidly increase, so do the number of deaths, which are a direct result of the acts of violence spreading throughout our nation. The question becomes, "Who is to blame?" The answer to this question will never be narrowed down to one specific cause; however, it's obvious that one of the leading causes of violence in society's youth is the unnecessary presence of violence in video games. These video games sow the seed of hatred, increase aggressive behavior, and cause kids to confuse unrealistic video games with everyday reality. The violence in video games goes against everything that our forefathers founded this country for and strips away all of the morals we have taught our youth.
Initially, as a nation that proclaims to be "under God", why would businesses throughout our country continue to produce and publish games with such evil content and advertise it as fun? It is important that we as a growing nation should strive to teach good ethics and moral reasoning. By producing violent video games directed at our "youth", (which is considered to be the generation of the undeveloped mind) they are simply planting the seed of hatred through the violence that these games portray. In recent studies, "Games rated as extremely violent increased from 53% in 1985 to 82% in 1988." (Cesarone 2) This mind-boggling statistic is just one of many that show how violence is becoming increasingly more evident in video games. When an innocent child sits down to play a video-game like "James Bond, 007" or "Grand Theft Auto" on his Nintendo64 or Play Station, he will spend the next several hours beating upon and shooting characters, not to mention witnessing extremely graphical death scenes full of blood and guts. It's these types of video games that plant the initial seeds of hatred in society's youth and the result of this hatred is being seen in homes and schools all across America.
