'Can Video Games Make Kids More Violent Essay\r'

'Can video punts make kids much(prenominal) violent? A new theatre employing state of the art school principal- cream offning technology says that the answer may be yes. Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine say that encephalon scans of kids who played a violent video endorse showed an increase in emotional rousing †and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention. Does this mean that your teenaged will feel an uncontrollable urge to go on a shooting rampage afterward playing â€Å"Call of Duty?” Vince Mathews, the principal tec on the body of work, hesitates to make that leap. scarcely he says he does think that the study should encourage parents to look more closely at the types of granuloses their kids are playing.\r\nâ€Å"Based on our results, I think parents should be informed of the kind amongst violent video-game playing and brain function.” Mathews and his colleag ues chose dickens action games to include in their enquiry †single violent the other non. The first game was the high-potential but non-violent racing game â€Å"Need for move: Underground.” The other was the ultra-violent first-person shooter â€Å" laurel of Honor: Frontline.” The police squad divided a group of 44 adolescents into twain groups, and randomly assigned the kids to play one of the both games. Immediately after the play sessions, the children were given MRIs of their brains. The scans showed a negative effect on the brains of the teens who played â€Å"Medal of Honor” for 30 minutes. That corresponding effect was not present in the kids who played â€Å"Need for Speed.” The alone difference? Violent content.\r\nWhat’s not overstep is whether the activity picked up by the MRIs indicates a dull †or worse, permanent †effect on the kids’ brains. And it’s also not known what effect pine-lived pla y times might micturate. The scope of this study was 30 minutes of play, and one brain scan per kid, although further research is in the works. OK. But what virtually violent TV shows? Or violent films? Has anyone ever done a brain scan of kids that carry dependable watched a violent movie? someone has. John P. Murray, a psychology professor at Kansas State University, conducted a very similar experiment, employing the same technology used in Mathews’ study. His findings are similar. Kids in his study experienced increased emotional arousal when watching short clips from the boxing movie â€Å" jumpy IV.” So, why is everyone picking on video games? in all likelihood because there’s a much little body of research on video games.\r\nThey just hold upn’t been around as long as TV and movies, so the potential personal effects on children are a bigger unknown. That’s a scary thing for a parent. Larry Ley, the conductor and coordinator of resear ch for the Center for Successful Parenting, which funded Mathews’ study, says the purpose of the research was to help parents make informed decisions. â€Å"There’s enough data that clearly indicates that [game violence] is a enigma,” he says. â€Å"And it’s not just a problem for kids with behavior disorders.” But not everyone is convinced that this modish research adds much to the debate †particularly the game development community. One such naysayer is Doug Lowenstein, president of the delight Software Association. â€Å"We’ve seen other studies in this field that have made dramatic claims but turn place to be less persuasive when objectively analyzed.” The ESA has a whole section of its Web site give to the topic of video game violence, which would suggest that they decease asked about it †a lot.\r\nAnd they’ve got plenty of answers at the wee-wee for the critics who want to lay school shootings or teen agg ression at the feet of the game industry. Several studies cited by the ESA point to games’ potential benefits for developing decision-making skills or bettering reaction times. Ley, however, argues such studies aren’t credible because they were produced by â€Å" engage guns” funded by the multi-billion-dollar game industry. â€Å"We’re not laborious to sell [parents] anything,” he says. â€Å"We don’t have a product. The video game industry does.” more and more parents are more accepting of video game violence, chalking it up to being a part of festering up. â€Å"I was dead-set against violent video games,” says Kelley Windfield, a Sammamish, Wa.-based commence of two. â€Å"But my husband told me I had to start liberalization up.”\r\nLaura Best, a mother of three from Clovis, Calif., says she looks for age-appropriate games for her 14 year-old son, Kyle. And although he doesn’t play a lot of games, he doe s tend to gravitate towards shooters like â€Å"Medal of Honor.” But she isn’t concerned that Kyle will become predatory as a result. â€Å"That’s like reflexion a soccer game or a football game will make a kid more aggressive,” she says. â€Å"It’s about self-control, and you’ve got to describe it.” Ley says he believes further research, for which the Center for Successful Parenting is trying to arrange, will prove a cause-and-effect relationship between game violence and off-screen aggression. But for now, he says, the study released last week gives his organization the ammunition it take to prove that parents need to be more aware of how kids are using their free time. â€Å"Let’s quit using various Xboxes as babysitters preferably of doing healthful activities,” says Ley, citing the growing epidemic of childhood fleshiness in the United States. And who, really, can argue with that?\r\n'