Video Games Desensitizing Teens

Video Games Desensitize Teens

        Video games in today's society have advanced long past the days of Pac-man and Pong, video games today have become more than just obtaining points in a game to gain a high score on the machine. Today video games are a form of very early exposure to things the normal teenager who does not play video games would not see. A teenager who does play video games like many of us have grown up will be exposed to violence, gore, sex and other obscenities that are also available on television and movies but in these games, it is the user themselves who is committing the act. Video games offer the average teenager exposure to worlds they would have never been exposed to before but when looking at what kind of effect this has on them is it a negative or positive one. We have seen these games evolve as technology has advanced and years have passed but what kind of effect have these changes in video games had on a teenager and their sensitivity to certain parts of society.

    Before attacking video games for how they can desensitize teenagers today you need to look at the benefits they can possibly have on them and how video games actually affect the growing and changing mind. In terms of cognitive speed and memory development, there have been studies done all over the world that will argue in favor of video games and the benefits they have. According to an article by Psychology Today a study done by researchers done at the University of California, San Francisco, “created a video game called NeuroRacer which allowed healthy volunteers to improve their ability to multitask and stay focused on a boring activity while keeping relevant information in mind.”. The ability to multitask and operate effectively while still being able to complete everyday mundane tasks is important for progression of the mind and shows that the brain is working at full capacity. An even more impressive study for the benefits of video games was done conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin showed how much video games can really do for the progression and even recovery of the human mind. The researchers found that video games can also be therapeutic and believe that “non-violent video games can be a useful tool for treating patients with mental health problems in which brain regions are altered or reduced in sizes, such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease.”. But although this shows some very positive reinforcement in the pro video game argument they found that non-violent video games can be a helpful tool. Teenagers today are able to gain access to violent video games so easily. Teens today don’t even need to go into the store today to purchase the disk of the game so exposure to violent video games often begins even earlier than their teenage years.

    Although much of the argument around violent video games in recent years has been that it desensitizes teens or will even influence to commit violent acts. There is room for this argument considering the violent nature behind many of the most popular video games of today like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty featuring guns, violence, and killing. Many are still competing against the argument that this is to be believed as fact. A German research team conducted a study to debunk this idea by taking a group of young men who had all been playing video games for around ten years and another group who hadn’t been playing video games and exposing them to violent imagery to see what kind of reaction in terms of the empathy they would feel and how it would affect them morally. When reviewing the results of their research they found that those who had played violent video games in the past had, “showed no signs of being desensitized to violence, at least judging by how their brains reacted to the drawings.”. This doesn’t mean this is the end all be all of saying video games desensitize teens but they also found that, “The brains of violent video game users and normal control subjects seem to process the material in the same way”. This brings up a different kind of argument about violence in society today that maybe it isn’t just video games that are desensitizing people to video games but everything we see around us. Today we turn on the television and can see movies, television programs, and even the daily news speaking about and showing graphic images of violence and exposing the public to it with ease. Every other day today you turn on the television and hear about a mass shooting that would have sent shock waves around the world just 30 years ago that doesn’t have the same ripple it has on people today. So maybe the argument shouldn’t be video games desensitizing teens but just everything that's happening around the world today.