Video games with violent content have recently become popular among teenagers, children and the adolescent. This new trend has raised great concern from parents, teachers, and legislatures. Many have come to voice their opinion on the need for a limit to be placed on the amount of hours the young generation should spend on the games. In fact, some have even argued that there is a need to stop completely adolescents from accessing the violent scenes in video games. This study outlines the impact of video games, its trends, and its health impact among teenagers. The paper also outlines directions for future research required on the effects and necessary precautions on the use of video games. With such frequent exposure to vicious video games,
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Three processes account for these changes, and they include; priming, aggressive cognition, and angry, emotional reactions, such as mimicking. An example of priming according to Whitaker and Bushman is the weapon effect. Here, the sight of a weapon increases violent thoughts and behavior. Mimicry is the idea of copying the actions of others, just like the brain mimics the environment. Therefore, the brain responds in a similarly way when one is playing an aggressive game (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009, p. 1043). This implies that children watching aggressive activities are likely to mimic such activities. Social learning theory, according to Kirsh (2013), also gives a hypothesis that exposure to violent video games would arouse behavioral mimicry, reinforcing the existing violent habits, and raising the internal …show more content…
355). Whereas mimic only requires one exposure for the children and the adolescent to make an observation so as to imitate it, observation learning requires repeated and frequent exposures (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009). Therefore, the more frequently the child observes the behavior, the more the chances to learn such behavior.
Classical and operand conditioning Classical conditioning is one in which a natural response gets associated with neutral stimuli. An example of these is Pavlov’s dog experiment that it salivates at the sight of food, when repeatedly paired with a bell, the dog salivates at hearing the sound of the bell. Such conditions apply to playing violent video games, in which the feelings influence the behavior in a social setting. For the operand condition, according to Whitaker and Bushman, a child gets associated with particular stimuli due to unnatural behavior and rewards. Similarly, the violent video gets and reinforces given behavior for the player, thereby conditioning them to behave in a violent manner (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009, p.
Three processes account for these changes, and they include; priming, aggressive cognition, and angry, emotional reactions, such as mimicking. An example of priming according to Whitaker and Bushman is the weapon effect. Here, the sight of a weapon increases violent thoughts and behavior. Mimicry is the idea of copying the actions of others, just like the brain mimics the environment. Therefore, the brain responds in a similarly way when one is playing an aggressive game (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009, p. 1043). This implies that children watching aggressive activities are likely to mimic such activities. Social learning theory, according to Kirsh (2013), also gives a hypothesis that exposure to violent video games would arouse behavioral mimicry, reinforcing the existing violent habits, and raising the internal …show more content…
355). Whereas mimic only requires one exposure for the children and the adolescent to make an observation so as to imitate it, observation learning requires repeated and frequent exposures (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009). Therefore, the more frequently the child observes the behavior, the more the chances to learn such behavior.
Classical and operand conditioning Classical conditioning is one in which a natural response gets associated with neutral stimuli. An example of these is Pavlov’s dog experiment that it salivates at the sight of food, when repeatedly paired with a bell, the dog salivates at hearing the sound of the bell. Such conditions apply to playing violent video games, in which the feelings influence the behavior in a social setting. For the operand condition, according to Whitaker and Bushman, a child gets associated with particular stimuli due to unnatural behavior and rewards. Similarly, the violent video gets and reinforces given behavior for the player, thereby conditioning them to behave in a violent manner (Whitaker & Bushman, 2009, p.