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“In the game Carmageddon, players run down pedestrians, including elderly women with walkers. If a player completes all levels of this game, he or she will have killed a maximum of 33,000 people” (Mediascope Press 2). Violence in video games has been a topic of debate in recent years, with concerns on whether violence in video games has an aggressive effect on children. Violence in video games makes children more aggressive and hostile; in addition, “video game violence makes children desensitized to violence, which can lead to violence at school and home” (Barnes 1). Video games that incorporate violence shouldn’t be played by young children. Young children don’t fully understand the difference between fantasy and reality. On the other hand, older kids know the difference between fantasy and reality, and right and wrong. Therefore older children should be allowed to play video games that contain violence. Some people say that kids are attracted to video games not so much by the violence, but because the games present puzzles or problems to solve (Sherry 1). If this is true, then why in a 1998 survey “80% of the video games preferred by young people contain violent or aggressive content; of these, 21% depict violence against women” (Mediascope Press 1). Also “in a survey of 900 fourth graders disclosed similar results: 50% of the respondents chose games with fantasy or human violence as their favorites” (Mediascope Press 1). Finally, “Two studies at the Psychology Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia concluded that men have a more hostile view of the world than women. The results from both studies are consistent with the General Aggression Model, which predicts that exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive behavior in both short term and the long term”(Anderson 1).
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