Negative Effect of Video Games on Children

Running head: NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
Negative Effect of Video Games on Children
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
In recent years, the increasing trends of mass shooting fueled the controversies that is, if
the violent video games has any impact on the child and youths. However, it is not a secret today
that the children are quite fond of various types of video games now a days. The excessive
engagement towards the video games is effecting the child’s health in both physical and mental
ways. Nowadays, most of the youths and children. It is observed that, the violent video games
have severe negative impact on cognitive behavior, physiological behavior and also on the
academic performances of the children who are addicted to the video games. It is often observed
that, the children, who are engaged in playing violent video games, are more aggressive and
violent in nature and such behavior will affect the child more severely along with time (Kimmig,
Andringa & Derntl, 2018). The essay, will assess the negative impact of violent video games on
the behavior, mental health, aggressive nature and mental health condition and academic
performances of the children who are addicted to those violent video games.
Various studies showed that, the violent video games can promote the aggressive
behavior of the children and along with this, it also promote reduction in the social behavior,
alteration in cognitive behavior as well. The study of Kuhn et al. (2018), focused on the fact that,
the violent video games may reduce the empathy and promote the aggression among the
children. In their study, almost 90 healthy subjects were used in that study and all the participants
played videogames for 2 months and it was observed that, there was a significant positive
relation among the aggression and violent video games on those subject population. In a recent
study comprised of meta-analysis of 98 studies showed that the violent video games negatively
affects the social behavior of the study participants. In addition, it was observed that, a few
subject population was asked to play violent games and previously they were playing non violent
games. After that their behaviors were measured that and it was observed that shifting towards

2NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
the violent games from the non-violent games caused shifting of their behavior and they became
less concerned about the social tasks. This study results immediately showed that, the shifting to
the violent video games is associated with the immediate change of behavior among the children
are playing violent games. According to the study of Greitemeyer & Mügge (2014), it was
established that, the violent video exposure seriously affect the social and related cognitive
behavior of the children. On the other hand they also observed that, prosocial video games may
cause decrease in the aggressive behavior of the children. In addition, it was revealed in the
studies that, time is a key factor in between the aggressive behavior and violent video games as it
was noted that if a person plays violent video games for 3 days in a consecutive manner, the
person will develop aggressive behavior. Therefore a short session of violent gaming will create
short term aggression in that child ( Hughes, 2014).
Thereafter, the violent video gaming practice can also negatively affect the academic
performances of the children and this fact is supported by various studies. The study of Terry &
Malik (2018) established the relationship in between the video gaming and poor academic
performances. The researcher conducted their research in the mid-western Canadian School
Division and in this study, almost 82 students participated and among them 29 were males and
53 were female. They used questionnaire for collecting the data and along with academic
performance they also assessed the attendance rate in the school of those students. The results
were differently analyzed for the males and females of the total subject population. In this study,
they used Pearson product-moment correlation to establish relation among the school
performance scores and violent gaming practice of the children. From the result they concluded
that for the male students the video game playing and attendance in the school has a negative
relation with each other that is the students who are playing more video games , they are mostly