Effects of Video Games on Children

Effects of Video Games on Children

Justin R. Epstein

Southern New Hampshire University

Video games have been around for more than three decades. There has been countless research done on how video games affect the human brain. Video games have evolved greatly since their creation. What was once just a ball with a horizontal line has become fully functional first person playing, high impact scenario-based games that have many levels and challenges. They are much more complex. They can be played with multiple players over the internet and have evolved a great deal since their introduction in the 1970’s. Although many people claim that video games are damaging to children and cause a lot of violence and aggressive people, there is no scientific evidence or history of crimes to support that claim. Studies have been done by countless universities and private groups. Many studies were done in the 1980’s and 1990’s about video games, and despite many claims of video games effect on health, no evidence was provided to show that video games cause health problems. In addition, juvenile arrests declined in each of the next seven years. “Between 1994 and 2001, arrests for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaults fell 44 percent, resulting in the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes since 1983. Juvenile murder arrests reached a high of 3,790 in 1993. By 2004, arrests were down 71 percent, to 1,110.” (Gentile) Video games are safe for children because they are officially rated, have not been proven to damage the brain, and provide children with a stress relief tool to expel excess energy.

Video games, like movies, have a rating system that tells people buying games what to expect while playing. In 1994, the Electronic Software Review Board (ESRB) was created to rate video games based on a variety of categories and gives a rating from everyone to adults only. This gives parents the information they need to make a decision to expose their children to the game. According to the ESRB, “The rating system is voluntary, although virtually all video games that are sold at retail in the U.S. and Canada are rated by the ESRB. Many U.S. retailers, including most major chains, have policies to only stock or sell games that carry an ESRB rating, and console manufacturers require games that are published on their systems in the U.S. and Canada to be rated by ESRB”. (ESRB) ESRB delivers a three-part grading curriculum that includes categories of rating to suggest what age group the game is appropriate for, material content indicators to indicate what type of programming may have led to the rating and could be of value or concern to the end user, and interactive parts, which advise about how users will interact with each other