Sauceda 1

Emmanuel Sauceda
Claudia Renteria
Composition 5
2014-06-04

Violent Videogames
There was a time when kids tended to ask Santa Claus for the best toy in the
market, the toy which was able to move its arms, legs, and talk by a button push, the
famous TRY ME that the toys have. A time when parents used to spend some time
playing with their kids, playing with Barbie, Ken, Max Steel and all those toys that were
the best thing that their kids could have dream about. But that time has finished. Now
the only thing kids ask to Santa is a videogame. The little detail is that they dont know
how that is going to affect them, but parents do. Parents should avoid buying or letting
their kids to play violent videogames because that brings consequences, as a bad
school performance, values and life distortion, etc.
Parents have an important role in this. There are many things that they can do in
order to protect their kids from violent games. Example: They can check the
Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings of the game in order to learn
about the games content. Another good advice is to play videogames with their children
to experience the games content, which let them know what their kids are playing.
Another tip is that they have to establish playing time rules (American Academy of Child
and Adolescent Psychiatry 2011). After a limited amount of time playing a violent video
game, a player can "automatically prime aggressive thoughts" (Bushman & Anderson,
Sauceda 2

2002, p. 1680). Thats why is so important for parents to be responsible for what their
kids are playing.
Violent videogames show a totally different world compared to the real world.
There are games like Mortal Kombat which show you that killing is fun, and that killing
the other people is the other way to survive. A game like Grand Theft Auto shows that
money and women are the only important thing. That game is only about killing people,
getting money, being powerful and getting girls the whole day. Another very common
videogame among kids is Call of Duty. Maybe you can say that its not that terrible ,but
if the main objective in that game is to kill other people, of course it is. Although those
videogames, let the kid have some fun, the idea of the real world corrupts. Those kinds
of games affect a childs thinking, and it distorts how the real world is.
Finally, another affected area because of violent videogames, is school
performance. After many studies, the results are consistent with surveys on adolescents
who play video games in the United States. In one representative sample of American
adolescents, aged 10 to 19, kids who played video games spent 30% less time reading
and 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 2007). Kids are
waiting for the bell the whole day only because they want to be at their house playing
videogames.
Violent videogames often make you have fun, but it is not the best nor a healthy
way to have it because of the repercussions that bring with. Videogames nowadays
have become a kids need, when it was only a hobby a couple years ago. Videogames
are not completely awful at all, as long as you keep control of them. In this essay, you
Sauceda 3

were able to see how does violent videogames affect the kids performance at school,
how their world vision gets corrupted and how the parents role has to be.
















Sauceda 4

Works cited
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Children and Video Games:
Playing with Violence. 2011.Web. May 29, 2014.
Cummings HM and Vandewater EA. Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time
Spent in Other Activities. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2011. Web. June 2, 2014