Summary on Violent Video Games: The Effects on Youth, and Public Policy Implications

    The article, "Violent Video Games: The Effects on Youth, and Public Policy Implications," talked about how video games can lead to aggression in children. It listed subjects like the history of violence in games, political standpoints and what came from the politics.
    Aggression, is considered as anything causing verbal or physical abuse to someone. There is a spectrum of aggression that has violence as high severity, while things like a week slap would be mild severity. Video game sales began to soar higher when violence became introduced to games. The first video game that had violence in it was Death Race, a game in which you drive and run over as many stick people as possible. After you ran them over, a tombstone would appear where they stood.
    As many other video games followed with increased violence, more children became exposed to them. A couple of senators, Joseph Lieberman and Herbert Kohl, noticed this trend and brought together hearings on how to keep video game violence away from the eyes of children. Thus created the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB). The ESRB created a rating for video games such as the common ratings: "E" for everyone, "T" for teen, and "M" for Mature (17+).
    When the ratings were introduced, it allowed game developers to add more gore, sex and violence since they wouldn't have to worry about kids playing them as much. The same thing happened when movies first received ratings.
    Even with the new ratings, they were not being enforced by retailers as found out by a sting operation that was conducted by National Institute on Media and the Family. Half of the children, some who were as young as 7, were able to go and buy a rated M game without parental supervision. Now, it is always policy to card or ask for parental supervision before the sale of a mature game, just like how you would be carded for other things that require a certain age.
    Studies were performed later on to try and determine if video games truly played a part in developing aggression in children. It showed that male children who played violent video games often, had lack of parental involvement were involved in more physical fights than others.
    As time has passed, governments have started putting restrictions on items such as "snuff" films and many other materials. With these restrictions, it is also stated that the debate over whether or not media plays a part in child aggression is over.