Getting kill streaks in Call of Duty and Battlefield, murdering people and stealing cars in Grand Theft Auto and L.A. Noire. This are the most violate and realistic games which might have a bad effect on children’s behaviour. However, that is the reason why those games are called games, there are not real or meant to be copied in daily life. If children are not clever enough to find this out by their selves, it is the responsibility of the parents to get clear that games are just games.
Children are not directly bad influenced by games. On the contrary, children learn much from games. For instance, many games currently require cooperation from the players to succeed their mission. Children who play this kind of games will learn what is needed to complete something they want to be done. It will boost their self-confidence and self-esteem if their way of playing the games is the winning one. That is another reason why gaming is not bad for children, cause if their tactic does not work out well they will be motivated to think creatively, change their tactic and still succeed their mission. Consequently children will develop skills in problem-solving, hand-eye coordination and focussing.
It is said games cause bad behaviour in children, but it is not clear how that should be caused. The main argument is the incidents of some freaks who start shooting at harmless people around them. These actions taken could be seen as copied from video games where the same action needs to be done to proceed the game. But isn’t it strange to relate those actions? Like there were no psychopathic murderers before the rise of violent games. As regards to crime, the last 10 years the rate of crime has not increased. Despite the amount of violence in computer games has largely increased.
Also it would be bad for children that they can restart the game easily if they died or did something wrong. The point of criticism is that it does not work like that in real life. But that is exactly a benefit of gaming. A quality of children is curiosity. Children try experimenting in real life with alcohol or even drugs. If this goes wrong, there is hardly a way back. In games children can finally do something without making fatal decisions.
Of course, there may be kids who are bad behaved, caused by games. They could be more aggressive cause they think when watching on a screen that people are hurting each other, this is the way to treat other children in real life. But if that is the case, the parents should be able to see through the occasion of the behaviour. The property of children to react aggressively is already owned and not specifically caused by games. And remember, that all violent games are only available for “children” with the minimum age of 18.
Killing and stealing is just in the game, and children should be told that if they did not know already. Then there is no change games can influence children’s behaviour in a bad way. On the contrary, gaming could be used as a advantage of developing several skills. Crime has not increased significant as the amount of violence has, or the rate of children that play violent games nowadays. So games are not the cause of bad behaviour in children.
