COMM 1138: Negative Effects of Video Games on Children's Well-being

This essay examines the detrimental effects of violent video games on children, focusing on cognitive and physiological behavior, academic performance, and overall mental health. Studies reveal a correlation between violent video games and increased aggression, reduced social behavior, and altered cognitive functions. Research indicates that exposure to violent video games can lead to decreased empathy and increased aggression, while prosocial games may reduce aggressive tendencies. Moreover, excessive video gaming is linked to poor academic performance, sleep disturbances, and physical health issues such as altered heart rate and obesity. The World Health Organization recognizes excessive gaming as a disorder, with studies showing a link between violent video gaming and mental health problems like PTSD and depression, emphasizing the urgent need to address video game addiction as a serious health concern.

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

3NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
absent in their classes. In addition they also found that, video game playing will also negatively
impact their final marks. Moreover, the boys reported that they felt sleepy in the school as they
were playing more violent video games.
The violent video game has also negative behavior on the physical and mental
health of the children. In studies, it was monitored that, the children who used to play
violent video games, had altered heart rate, problems of nausea and dizziness and also
had aggressive nature. Moreover, the addiction to playing video game is associated with
the obesity of the children and the number is increasing day by day. In addition, such
violent video games can also hamper the development of brain of the children. It was
found that violent video gaming practice negatively impacted the structure and activity of
the human brain and these changes are associated with change in behavior and brain
functionality of the children. The impact of violent video games on the mental health
condition of the children are also a serious area of concern in recent times. According to
WHO, excessive gaming can be a disorder that is “gaming disorder”. In 2013, the
American Psychiatric Association (APA) had included the gaming disorder in their
DSM-5 criteria for further investigation (Mammoser, 2018). The study of Grant, Spears
& Pedersen (2018) showed that excessive violent video gaming can cause serious mental
problems such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. In this study, they
recruited 1023 children and among them 53.9% reported about playing video games
regularly. They found that, almost 43.4% of the gaming children had PTSD and positive
signs of depression. The more amount of time, the children are playing video games,
those children are more prone to have mental health issues such as depression and PTSD.
So it is quite possible that, the violent video gaming practice and children’s mental health

4NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
are correlated with each other and video gaming practice in the children may cause
mental health problems among the children who are addicted to the violent video gaming.
Not only this, but the violent video games addiction has become a serious area of concern
for the mental health experts as it is now counted as a disease according to the WHO. The
mental health experts reported that they faced situations where they had to treat children
who are addicted to gaming. The situation has become so serious that WHO will include
this mental health problem in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). In 2016,
almost 13% of Ontario kids that is almost addicted to the violent video gaming and the
number is almost 123,000 kids in total. According to the report, the percentage of video
gaming addicted children is higher by 9% than that of the 2007 In recent times, 1 out of 5
children is affected by this gaming addiction. Along with this , there are also some
instances where video game addiction has become fatal for the children as in some cases
it was noted that children had taken steps like committing suicide just because they were
restricted to play video games (Oliveira, 2018).
Hence it can be concluded that, the violent video gaming practice has immense negative
impact on the children as they are very much addicted to those video games as most of the
children have become socially inactive due to their video gaming addiction. Therefore, violent
video gaming practice not only affects the mental, physiological and psychological health of the
children but it also hampers the academic performance of the children as well.

5NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
References
Grant, S., Spears, A., & Pedersen, E. R. (2018). Video Games as a Potential Modality for
Behavioral Health Services for Young Adult Veterans: Exploratory Analysis. JMIR
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Greitemeyer, T., & Mügge, D. O. (2014). Video games do affect social outcomes: A meta-
analytic review of the effects of violent and prosocial video game play. Personality and
social psychology bulletin, 40(5), 578-589.
Hughes, E. (2014). Effect of Video Games on Child Development | Developmental Psychology
at Vanderbilt. Retrieved from
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/developmentalpsychologyblog/2014/04/effect-of-video-games-
on-child-development/
Kimmig, A. C. S., Andringa, G., & Derntl, B. (2018). Potential adverse effects of violent video
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adults. Frontiers in psychology, 9.
Kühn, S., Kugler, D. T., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2018). Does
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study. Molecular psychiatry, 1.
Mammoser, G. (2018). Mental Health and Video Game Addiction. [online] Healthline. Available
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6NEGATIVE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON CHILDREN
Oliveira, M. (2018). Video game addiction concerns mental health experts. Retrieved from
https://globalnews.ca/news/4122290/video-game-addiction-mental-health/
Terry, M., & Malik, A. (2018). Video Gaming as a Factor That Affects Academic Performance
in Grade Nine. Online Submission.