Preventing Exposure of Kids to Violent Video Games - Speech or Presentation Example

Video games are also a component of the media and the usage of video games has greatly increased over the years as a form of entertainment. With the surge in the playing of video games, the negative aspects of video games have come forward and have been highlighted. A strong link between playing violent video games and the increase in the rate of crime amongst youths has been portrayed and many criminal acts have been associated with exposure to violence in video games. Video games have become an essential form of entertainment for youths and the increasing popularity can be analyzed from the fact that children who are as young as two years of age play video games on an average of one hour every day.

This tends to increase with age and children between the age group of 8 to 13 years play video games for more than approximately 7.5 hours in a single week. Furthermore, another very important aspect that has been indicated by research is that teenagers presented the fact that the games that they bought and played were not reviewed by their parents. Thus there is no regulation on the type of video games that these children play (Anderson et al 2001). It has also been analyzed that 75 percent of the games that are played by teenagers are not meant for their age and have a large amount of violence portrayed in them (Adams, 2010).

Video games dating back from the years following 1970. The creation of video games itself was not an issue of debate but arguments arose with regard to video games when violent video games were brought into the market. These included Death Race 2000, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Wolfenstein 3D, and Night Trap. These video games all follow violent themes and patterns and were objected upon. Such controversies were a threat for the video game industry and in the year 1994 Entertainment Software Rating Board came into existence which was meant to regulate the violence and sexual material of the video games.

This served to be an important stop owing to the fact that a controlling measure was essential for keeping a check on the type of video games that came into the market. Researches indicated the fact that there was greater popularity of violent video games and 59 percent of girls and 73 percent of boys in their fourth year of school preferred violent games over the other ones. The matter became a subject of national concern and the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision that it may put bans on violent video games owing to the negative aspects of these issues (Anderson et al 2001; Greenberg 2007; Suddath 2010).

Important incidents have served as eye-openers with regard to this subject. The killing of a six-year-old girl named Zoe by her sister and her boyfriend was a shocking incident. Zoe became the target of her sister Heather Trujillo who was 16 years old and her boyfriend Lamar Roberts who was 17 years old. According to reports, Heather and her boyfriend were greatly inspired by the game Mortal Combat and were practicing the moves of the game on Zoe. This resulted in Zoe suffering from multiple fractures and eventually her death (McPhee 2007).

The death of Zoe was a tragic incident. Children should be allowed to play video games but parental supervision is an extremely essential step that needs to be taken. Parents should guide their children and they should keep fixed hours for their games.