Violent Video Gaming Practice among Children

Running head: VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Violent Video Gaming Practice among Children
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1VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Introduction
In recent times, with growing enhancement of the technology and the gaming practice, it
is observed that, the young children are becoming more and more addicted to such games.
Therefore, there are also such games which are quite violent in nature. Most of the people
believe that hose video games are directly affecting the children and youths are addicted to those
games. There is no doubt about the fact that those games affect the children by enhancing their
addiction towards the games ( Dunckley, 2016). In recent time, a game named ‘PUBG’, had
entered into the market in which 100 players would be evacuated to an island and they have to
kill each other to survive in the battle. This game has attracted a lot of children globally due to its
cartoonish violence and quirky features. Researcher has raised the question about the effects of
this game on the aggressive behavior, empathy and depression of the child gamer (ScienceDaily,
2017). However, various studies indicated that, there is no such direct effect of violent gaming
on the aggressive behavior, empathy and depressive nature of the children. In this essay, the
evidence of having no effect of violent video gaming on the empathy, aggression and depression
will be discussed by busing research studies.
Effect on Empathy of the gamers
Most of the people believes that, the children and youths, who are engaging in playing
violent video game, will surely develop reduced empathy that is reduced emotional feeling. It is
often said that violent media such as violent movies or video games will blunt the empathy of the
video gamers. However, in a recent study, the researchers of Germany showed the violent video
gaming practice has no such effect on the empathy of the gamer. In their study they used
functional magnetic resonance imaging (f-MRI) on the players who are playing games for a long
time and in the study it was observed that the long-time gamers showed same response to

2VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
emotionally provocative images and videos as non-gamers. This study showed that the violent
gaming has not so much effect on the video gamers.
Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2018). The
myth of blunted gamers: no evidence for desensitization in empathy for pain after a violent
video game intervention in a longitudinal fMRI study on non-gamers. Neurosignals, 26(1),
22-30.
The study of Kuhn et al. (2018) also supported the findings of the German researcher. In
their study, a Longitudal f-MRI study was designed and the study was conducted for 16 weeks.
The participants or the subject populations were selected in a random sampling method. The
subjects were assigned for playing video games GTA5 (n= 26), the control group was assigned
for playing a non-violent game (Sims 3) (n= 24) and the passive control group (n=30) had not
given any tasks. Each of the intervention group was asked to play the games for 30 minutes per
day for eight weeks. In the final result, the authors found that, there is no desensitization effect
among the violent video gamers and non-gamers. The large sample size and presence of
appropriate control group had enhanced the reliability and quality of the study. On the other
hand, the researcher had failed to identify specifically any long term effect of the gaming.
Effect on Aggression
Aggressive behavior is often associated with the risk factors of developing aggression
among the children who are addicted to the violent gaming practices. Many researchers
identified about the bad effects such as aggression of violent gaming. On the other hand there are
also various studies that uses f-MRI techniques, showed that there is no effect on the brain
activity due to the playing of video game.