Young people have always had a sort of game to play down the years. Animal racing, stick fighting, arm wrestling and the likes.
Video games became a thing in the 1990s and today, nearly every young person, especially males, either play games on consoles, mobile phones, personal computers, etc. The best gaming experience is obviously on consoles and with the PlayStation 5 recently launched, video games has never come so close to matching reality, graphically.
The most popular kinds of video games are sports and warfare and violent video games come under the latter. Games like Crime City, Grand Theft Automated, Gangstar, etc. has taken violence in video games to a whole new level over the past few years.
These games reward players for killing innocent pedestrians and policemen on duty. The main objective of these games is to instigate violence, go against the laws of the land and kill people who keep to them.
On the 3rd of August 2019, a gunman who killed 22 people and injured 24 others at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and henceforth made a fleeting reference to video game soldiers, indicating that he was familiar with video violence.
It’s quite simple why this man would take inspiration from video games. At first young people play these games purely for fun, but the more they play, the more they become fond of the game characters and over time, they want to recreate the actions of their graphical beasts in real life.
Once one is addicted to these sort of games, the actions are usually rehearsed in the human brain until they become second nature. That is the point when a teen points non-existent guns at non-existent figures. A child who grew up playing these games would have role models in the characters, and what do people need role models for? Someone to mould their lifestyles on.
This could eventually get to the point where the young man wants to do these things that his favourite game character does (in the game) in real life.
In summary, video games are fun, and good for a child’s development, and even violent ones in most cases can have little effect on how a child grows and thinks about the society.
But sometimes, it could be a negative influence to a child. Two, three four children? That’s a negative impact to the society.
Parents need to do better in monitoring how their children/wards play, how much time they spend in it, and most importantly, educate them on the dangers of ever trying to recreate their video game actions in real life.
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