Do Video Games Harm Children?
I’ve always suspected that violent video games were unhealthy to the mental health and well-being of children playing them. A recent study in responses the field of video games investigated how violent games affect the emotional behavior of children and how it changes their response to life events. Playing video games that are violent, for as little as 20 minutes, reduces normal, anticipated responses and causes measurable desensitization to real world violence. “We found that the subjects who played violent video games for 20 minutes had lower physiologic responses when they watched videos of real-life violence,” said Nicholas Carnagey, who conducted the research while a psychology instructor at Iowa State University in Ames. The study determined that over exposure to violence tended to cause the children to become numb and insensitive to acts of violence. Iowa State University researchers warned that it is not important the amount of time the child spends playing the violent games. H
