How Digital Games Can Influence on Your Children

Technology had greatly influenced the way we entertain ourselves. From the radio to television and now, digital games are more accessible than ever. With the help of smart phones, every single person had played at least two or more digital games from simple puzzles to high-end RPG games.

It is fun, entertaining and quite addicting however, it is said to be the roots of violence and juvenile crimes in first world countries. Do video games really affect our children? The gaming industry targets young male adolescents with an age range of 10 to 49 years old with the average of 35 years old. However, males may be the target market, females are not excluded from the scene; 2 out of 5 gamers are female.

The average gamer spends 18 hours a week playing games ranging from MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) to first-person shooter console games. With everyone gaining access to video games, children are playing games with inappropriate content and displaying violence. 25% of total gamers in the United States are underage; this forged the gaming industry to set up game ratings in order to control the distribution of digital games, including ones in your phone.

However 90% of these children have claimed that their parents never checked game ratings before giving them access to it. In comparison to other media, video game rating and control is moving slow as ever because of issues in control, implementation and consistency in video game categories.

Violence in Video Games

There have many debates among lawmakers, citizens and video game productions regarding
violence in video games and the total ban of its distribution. In 1999, Dylan Kebold and Eric
Harris killed 13 people and injured 20 more in Colorado High School.

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Linda Sanders – a relative of one of the victims filed a lawsuit against video game creators, saying that it had influenced the juvenile suspects in committing such crimes. Both teens play “Wolfstein 3D”, “Mortal Combat” and “Doom” which are deemed extremely violent games. This encouraged the creation of ESRB or Entertainment Software Rating board.

According to recent study by Sean P. Nuebert from Rochester Institute of University, video games may have an influence to a gamer that has history of violence in the past. A great example would be someone who has anti-social disorder playing violent games would likely be affected by its content. It is a psychological approach to violent video games but it’s still not enough to prove its connection between violence.

Video games on a whole new perspective

Despite these debates, there had also been studies that are pro-video games. According to the
Educational Development Center, children aged 4 to 5 years old who play educational video
games have better letter recognition, sound association to these letters and understanding basic
concepts in stories.

For the teens and the older crowd, the Office of Naval Research released a study concluding games improve the brain’s ability to process information and enhance problem solving skills. It shows that gamers have 10-20% more cognitive ability than non-gamers.

Whether you agree or disagree to the concept of influence from violence in video games, it is still important that we monitor our children from the things they watch on TV, social media and the video games they play and it is possible to get aid from netspysoftware.

  Faizan Ahmad

About the Author:

This article is posted by Faizan who is the Author and Founder of TechSenser. He is a Professional Blogger from India and a passionate writer about Technology, Gadgets, How-to-Guides, etc. You can connect him on Google+.