Influence of video games on youth in promoting violent behavior

Influence of video games on youth in promoting violent behavior Youth. Who is youth? It’s no one but our future. Youth has always been the representation of a nation. No other than the youth of a nation can prosper it. But what our youth has been up till now is detrimental to our future. Youth always has to be consistent, persevered, focused, and diligent but unfortunately what we are confronting is absurd. Ours has indulged itself in depravities. The most common among all the depravities is technology and mostly among them is video games. The youth has so deeply affected and submerged itself in video games and other technological iniquities that perils await the future. Although video games have both positive and negative effects on the youth but it mostly tends to acquaint themselves with the negative ones. It’s human nature. It tends to choose what’s not better for it. Harping on the control of technology, it is so sagaciously said, “Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.” It’s what emphasizes on the use of video games that it is addicting but overcoming it is quite impossible. The most enlightened part of the dark side of the use of video games is the provoke of violent behavior in children or the youth. What the youth is up to, has been crystal clear from its aggressive reflexes towards minute things only due to the excessive use of video games or one may say technology. Technology has been the bone of content and it has bred the gloomy side. The society is filled up with tons of personalities and if the tons of personalities turn into aggressive, absurd and indolent youth, the future has to be greeted a warm goodbye. It would be an end to the dreams of our predecessors. I can’t suggest you the exact ways to bring this situation down but precautionary measures and some nearly missing hits for correction can be suggested. The only way to hold it is to have a hold on your habits. Developing habits in contrast to this nuisance or weakness may help in overcoming it. Technology has dominated the modern era. It’s now not the era of our predecessors where the people used to get indulged in physical activities and one’s emotions rather than being submerged in the aura of smartphones introduced now a days. The main content of bone of all the issues raised now a days is technology, yet it is the problem solver too. Converging straight to the point, the main issue today is the usage of technology in the form of video games by the youth, our young future. It’s promoting more than the expected rate of violation and indolence in the youth. In the 1970s, gaming industry boomed in US and gained tremendous growth. An optimum of 83% children are concerned with video games in the US each month. Same goes with our own country, Pakistan. We have risen children under the

weather of video games. The main thing under the spotlight is the excessive habit of video games by the future generation. This very considered thing promotes pessimistic approaches among the minds of the youth and it may or for surely lead to chaos in the future. Such a dark side of the usage of video games also has a parallel approach that is the facilitation in creativity but that is to a little extent because excessive use chaotically destroys the mindset of usage of capabilities of a child and doesn’t promote the enhancement in creativity but only disarray. The most focused cynical approach of video games is the preferment of violent behavior. This very characteristic develops other vices in a child too. Dwelling upon the topic, it is certain that red flags await the future. Video games share a lot of content. The content varies from the category of decent to evil. Talking in reference to the youth, the content perception depends upon the youth itself. Researches reveal that aggressive behavior is expressed by the youth with the performance of video games. According to the book “Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents”, an experiment was conducted in which it was concluded that children preferred to play video games with punishment set to high levels and that the performance of the video games was associated with recent violent behavior expressed. According to other study by “Anderson et al.” The behavior of elementary school students was examined, which revealed that among 430 third, fourth and fifth graders majority of the students played violent games and that in turn made them look at the world with an aggressive manner and hence this concludes that violent video games contribute in aggressive behavior of the children. According to “Harvard Health”, violent video games lead to crimes and that the aggression in the video games don’t correlate with the real world and if it does, this may create disputes socially. Also, according to the “American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry”, video games are evaluated by the Electronic Software Ratings Board (ESRB) and rated for the appropriateness of video games for the use of children and teens. The ratings are prominently exposed on the game’s packaging that lets the user know about the game. Now a days, the youth, in spite of knowing the violence high rating on a game, tend to play it in the seek of adventure but end in psychological frenzy. Gaming and especially violent gaming contribute in aggressive behavior in family. Distraction of the youth from career focus has been the main conflict. It distorts the focus of students and leads to the absurd quality of procrastination in them. Another evidence for the correlation of video games with aggression is the “General Aggression Model”. This model is

an innate social learning theory which proposes that repeated susceptibility to violent media increases the risks of attaining aggressive thoughts and also increases the probability of aggressive cognition and emotions. Addiction to violent video games will lead to a lifetime attainment of aggressive character and other vices. The spread of such violence due to violent media is only for the reason that many people don’t even accept the fact that violent media spreads violence while sitting to a 19-inch Television. Refusal of this fact has metastatically spread violence and all the consequences are prominent in the form of crimes in a state. In 1972, the first video game was programmed. It was a tennis game. The youth was curious enough about it. It had a kind of good impact on the youth but with the passage of time, what dominated was the demand for new software and hardware. This demand of youth exposed the appetite of youth for video games. To quench this thirst, video games were developed brimmingly. The development was slow but the outcome at the end, which we see now, is immense. The outcome brought a lot of unethical changes in the behavior of children. The behavior of the youth has been adapted so that it responds in an aggressive manner to everything around it due to the only reason of violent video games being played. It is said by Jane McGonigal, a game designer, “A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy. In other words, game play is the direct emotional opposite of depression.” But the sad part is that games here aren’t perceived as an opportunity of optimism but a leading pathway to pessimism. Ways forward to this issue aren’t as easy as ABC. It needs systematic and observational plannings. Some clever ways to prevent such situations include positive procrastination. What I mean by this word “positive procrastination” is that if ever one tends to play a video game, he should procrastinate or distract himself by getting himself involved in other things. This may be hard at the beginning but it will get smooth with time. 1% improvement each day will bring about a lot of change in the behavior. In a sense, video games should not be blamed at all for all what is happening with the youth. It’s all about the recklessness, ignorance and foolishness shown towards playing video games by the children. Parents or guardians themselves allow to act foolish and don’t have checks on the content of video games played by their children. Video games can be approached both positively and negatively but it really depends upon the approaching person. One really big impact change of behavior includes the change of perspective regarding video games. If the youth is fed with

the thoughts that video games should be played with the perception to extract themes out of it and for learning purposes, majority of the behavioral issues will vanish themselves. It’s all about a merged stand that should be taken by the whole society. If the whole society takes the stand together and plays a role in promoting positivity regarding video games and reduce the usage of video games or induce positive feeds in the minds of the youth, the violence may vanish and an aura of peace may develop and spread.