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In 2014 sociologist Ross Orlando analyzed race and gender representation in fifty popular video games, selecting the ten highest-rated games from the years between 2007 and 2012. Documenting the race and gender of sixty-one protagonists appearing in fifty games, Orlando found that 8 percent were women or girls, 3 percent were black, 3 percent had Asian heritage, 1 percent had Latino heritage, and no protagonists represented indigenous peoples.

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Violent Video Games Can Carry Negative Side Effects

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Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2019. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http%3A%2F%2Flink.galegroup.com%2Fapps%2Fdoc%2FWBIZYA811034899%2FOVIC%3Fu%3Dpl2683%26sid%3DOVIC%26xid%3D5095c514. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019. Originally published as "Why can't we all admit that violent video games are sick?" The Week, 9 Mar. 2018.

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Addiction, edited by Christine Watkins, Greenhaven Press, 2014. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http%3A%2F%2Flink.galegroup.com%2Fapps%2Fdoc%2FEJ3010103406%2FOVIC%3Fu%3Dpl2683%26sid%3DOVIC%26xid%3D9ccc4181. Accessed 27 Feb. 2019. Originally published as "Video Game Addiction: Does It Occur? If So, Why?" http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn, 2 Feb. 2012.

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Video games are wildly popular and well-established media that have been growing and changing for decades, and if you have kids, they probably like them. If you don't play video games yourself, you might be concerned over what exactly these things are all about. If you're worried about what your children see and hear when they play on their PC, tablet, smartphone, or console, we can tell you everything you need to know. There's no reason to be afraid of video games or to assume they're filled with explicit or unpleasant imagery. This guide can help you educate yourself and understand exactly what your kids are playing.

Not Just for Kids

This is the most important thing you need to understand about video games. They aren't just for kids, and in terms of content and audience they aren't special when compared with any other type of media. Just like movies, TV shows, and books, video games can be about anything and intended for anyone. Look at video games the same way you would look at movies or TV.

For every Frozen, there's a Human Centipede. For every Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, there's a Game of Thrones. And for every Super Mario Odyssey, there's a Doom. Video games aren't just a diversion for children. They're a fully developed category of media with titles that appeal to a wide variety of audiences across different ages and interests.

Children aren't even the primary audience for most video games. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 72 percent of regular video game players are over 18, and the average gamer is 35 years old. Remember, the people who grew up on the Atari 2600 and NES are in their 30s now.

Know What They're Playing

Because games are as varied as movies and TV shows, you should keep an eye on the games your kids play just as you would what they watch. Take action and engage with your kids about video games. Find out what games they like. Ask what they're playing. If you have a hard time remembering the names of the games, write them down. You don't need to learn everything about these games, but you need to be able to identify them so you can make educated decisions.

When you know what they're playing and what genres they're interested in, you can start checking out the ratings. And that brings us to our next topic.

Read the Ratings

Movies and TV shows have ratings systems so parents can know whether they want their kids to watch them. Video games have a similar ratings system. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), an extension of the ESA, has been formally rating the content of video games since 1994. Any video game you buy in a store in the United States will have a black-and-white rectangle somewhere on the box that says ESRB on the bottom, with a larger letter or letters in the middle. This is the game's ESRB rating.

There are six primary ESRB ratings: EC for Early Childhood, E for Everyone, E10 for Everyone 10 and up, T for Teen, M for Mature, and AO for Adults Only. The rating on each game will explain what it is with a basic descriptor and, if needed, some simple warnings about the types of potentially objectionable content you'll find.

ESRB ratings aren't just for retail games you buy in the store. The ESRB rates digitally distributed games as well. If your kids want to download a game to their Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or PC, there will be ESRB ratings you can check. The same applies to most smartphone and tablet games.

If you can't find the ESRB rating of a game, you can search for it on the ESRB's online database. Enter the name of the game, and you'll get a list of possible titles sorted by platform. There's even an ESRB ratings database app so you can search from your phone.

What the Ratings Mean

Each ESRB entry will have some detail about the content of the rated game, but you can learn a lot just by checking the letter on the rating. They're sorted into broad age groups, like movie and TV ratings, and you can be confident about what you can find in games in each group. E, E10, T, and M are by far the most common ratings, though some games intended specifically for children can be classified EC, and games with extreme content beyond what even the M rating can manage will be rated AO.

E for Everyone

These are the softest, fluffiest games available. E for Everyone means you won't find any objectionable content in these titles, and that they're suitable for children under 10. This doesn't mean they're just for little kids, though. Puzzle games like Puyo Puyo Tetris and some sports games like Rocket League are rated E, and we really like those games, ourselves. E for Everyone is similar to the Y and Y7 TV ratings, and the G movie rating. They're good for anyone!

E10 for Everyone 10 and Up

E10 games are a little bit spicier, but still good for most kids. They're similar to games with an E rating, but they might have more fantasy violence or some characters might actually get angry at each other in some way-think the difference between Peppa Pig and Bugs Bunny. E10 is similar to the Y7 TV rating and the PG movie rating. You won't find anything objectionable, but more action and drama might get your younger kids worked up.

T for Teen

T for Teen games are where you should start to keep an eye on things, especially if your kids aren't teens yet. They can be violent and explore complex and difficult themes. You won't find much, if any, blood or strong language, but you can expect to see things like fantasy swordfighting and gunfighting with enemies that explode into puffs of smoke, characters dangling from cliffs with actual uncertainty about if they'll hold on, and even off-camera or bloodless deaths. There also might be crude humor or in-game gambling (not with real money, but perhaps a video game version of poker or dice for resources in the game itself). T for Teen is closest to the PG TV rating and PG-13 movie rating.

M for Mature

M for Mature games are as extreme as you can get at most stores and on most systems. Almost nothing is held back here, and you can expect to see explicit violence, language, and even sexual situations comparable with R-rated movies or MA-rated TV. There might be nudity. There might be swearing. There might be gruesome blood and guts. There are lines that M-rated games won't cross, like explicit sexual intercourse, but anything you can see in a movie theater or on cable, you might see in these titles.

EC for Early Childhood

This is the only case where the rating can tell you that a video game is for children and only for children. Both EC and E games are accesible for everyone including young children, and won't have any unsettling imagery or offensive language in them. EC games are intended specifically for young kids, and likely won't hold the interest of older children (or adults). These are games you can feel confident in letting your four-year-old play.

AO for Adults Only

This is the rarest rating, and the most explicit. AO for Adults Only means that the game can have graphic sexual content, or extremely gruesome violent content beyond what even M-rated games can do. This rating is also retail poison, so you don't have to worry about finding it in stores. No major retailers or game consoles' online stores even offer AO-rated games. To find these, you need to actively search for them from the same places you would find pornography. The exception is PC games on Steam, because Steam doesn't curate or restrict content in its games nearly as much as other digital stores (though many adult-themed games on Steam are still tweaked to be less explicit than if you purchase them directly from the developer, or from other outlets).

Beware of Online Gaming

Video games themselves are reliably safe if you know what's in them. When those games go online, however, it becomes a lot more difficult to regulate. Any video game with voice chat might expose your kids to other players' use of objectionable and offensive language. Worse yet, any game that allows modifications to be used or supports any kind of visual communication might contain explicit imagery.

ESRB ratings don't extend to online games because publishers can't control what other players do. There might be limitations like chat filters and mute functions, but it can get pretty gruesome because other people online aren't very nice. If this is the case in a game, the ESRB entry will say "Online interactions not rated by the ESRB." That's a sign that you should take a close look at the game and consider whether you want your kids using it online.

Voice chat is the biggest problem here, because anyone can say anything, and offensive language is very common. This appears often in competitive first-person shooters often rated T and M. PC games can also support modifications and add-on art, letting players put in their own pictures as tags on walls or in their profiles, or show explicit images in the games. These aren't certain for every online game, and they aren't the fault of the developer or publisher, but they are a concern. Check the online features of your kids' games, particularly if they have voice chat or mods.

Consider Parental Controls

You can limit what games your kids can play, even when you're not around. Every major gaming platform has some form of parental controls you can enable that restrict the software your children can run and to what extent they can be connected online. The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One all have settings that give you greater control over what games your kids consume, with guides on how to use them. The ESRB has a helpful page with guides to using the parental controls of different game systems. Even Steam has parental controls for PC games, though you need some knowledge of computers to implement them.

Many of these parental control systems let you do more than limit what games your kids can play on different game consoles and your PC. The Nintendo Switch has a separate app that lets you set how much time your kids can spend playing video games, and both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One let you control what TV and movies your kids watch, and filter out offensive web content.

PCs, smartphones, and tablets all have several options for controlling what media your kids consume. Our guides to parental control software and parental control mobile apps can walk you through what you need to install on your devices to look after your kids.

Talk to Your Kids and Trust Them

Let's be honest, you're reading this because you're not entirely familiar with the technology and media your kids consume. That means, on some level, they know more about video games than you do. They have an advantage in all of these different ways to limit what video games they play.

You can't blindly limit what they watch and play and expect it to stick. Don't simply ban your kids from playing games. Talk to them about what they like. Find out about the shows they watch and the games they play. Openly discuss why they like them, and if you find a game objectionable, tell them why. The best way to protect your children from unpleasant things is by standing beside them and helping them understand what they're seeing, and what you don't want them to see. If a game is too violent or sexual but your kids want to play it, be open and honest about why you don't want them to. And if you're afraid a game is too violent or sexual, find out more about it and talk to your children about why they want to play it.

Parental controls can be very effective, but your children have an advantage over you on these platforms. Kids born after the turn of the millennium grew up with smartphones and tablets and broadband and video game systems with mature libraries. They started learning about the technical side of these things at a much younger age than you or I did. And, well, if they're determined and curious enough, any parental control can be broken. Education and communication are your greatest tools in protecting your children from content you don't want them to be exposed to.

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What Every Parent Needs to Know About Video Games

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Video games are wildly popular and well-established media that have been growing and changing for decades, and if you have kids, they probably like them. If you don't play video games yourself, you might be concerned over what exactly these things are all about.

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Provide unmatched healthcare experiences ...every day.

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Part 2 of 2: Video Games-Good or Bad?

Last week: The Violent Side of Video Games

Here's some news for you to share with your parents and teachers: Video games might actually be good for you.

Whenever a wave of teenage violence strikes, movies, TV, or video games often take the heat. Some adults assume that movies, TV, and video games are a bad influence on kids, and they blame these media for causing various problems. A variety of studies appear to support the link between media violence and bad behavior among kids (See The Violent Side of Video Games).

Video games can help focus attention.

But media don't necessarily cause violence, says James Gee. Gee is an education professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "You get a group of teenage boys who shoot up a school-of course they've played video games," Gee says. "Everyone does. It's like blaming food because we have obese people."

Video games are innocent of most of the charges against them, Gee says. The games might actually do a lot of good. Gee has written a book titled What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

A growing number of researchers agree with Gee. If used in the right way, video and computer games have the potential to inspire learning. And they can help players improve coordination and visual skills.

Attention-getting games

A good video game is challenging, entertaining, and complicated, Gee says. It usually takes 50 to 60 hours of intense concentration to finish one. Even kids who can't sit still in school can spend hours trying to solve a video or computer game.

"Kids diagnosed with ADHD because they can't pay attention will play games for 9 straight hours on the computer," Gee says. "The game focuses attention in a way that school doesn't."

The captivating power of video games might lie in their interactive nature. Players don't just sit and watch. They get to participate in the action and solve problems. Some games even allow players to make changes in the game, allowing new possibilities.

And kids who play computer games often end up knowing more about computers than their parents do. "Kids today are natives in a culture in which their parents are immigrants," Gee says.

In his 2 to 3 years of studying the social influences of video games, Gee has seen a number of young gamers become computer science majors in college. One kid even ended up as a teaching assistant during his freshman year because the school's computer courses were too easy for him.

Screen reading

Video games can enhance reading skills, too. In the game Animal Crossing, for instance, players become characters who live in a town full of animals. Over the course of the game, you can buy a house, travel from town to town, go to museums, and do other ordinary things. All the while, you're writing notes to other players and talking to the animals. Because kids are interested in the game, they often end up reading at a level well above their grade, even if they say they don't like to read.

Now being developed, the educational computer game "Revolution" brings kids to colonial America. Players become characters in a small Virginia town in 1773.

Education Arcade

Games can inspire new interests. After playing a game called Age of Mythology, Gee says, kids (like his 8-year-old son) often start checking out mythology books from the library or join Internet chat groups about mythological characters. History can come alive to a player participating in the game.

Even violent games have a positive side, Gee says. " Grand Theft Auto 3 does not exist to get off on shooting people," he says. When the game begins, your character has just been released from jail. You need to figure out how to make a living, but the only people you know are criminals. Along the way, you might end up fighting or killing people, but you don't have to.

"The game offers you a palette of choices," Gee says. Players must confront moral dilemmas, develop social relationships, and solve challenging problems that might apply to real life, he says. "How compelling would a game be if you only had good choices?"

Improved skills

Video games might also help improve visual skills. That was what researchers from the University of Rochester in New York recently found.

In the study, frequent game players between the ages of 18 and 23 were better at monitoring what was happening around them than those who didn't play as often or didn't play at all. They could keep track of more objects at a time. And they were faster at picking out objects from a cluttered environment.

"Above and beyond the fact that action video games can be beneficial," says Rochester neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier, "our findings are surprising because they show that the learning induced by video game playing occurs quite fast and generalizes outside the gaming experience."

The research might lead to better ways to train soldiers or treat people with attention problems, the researchers say, though they caution against taking that point too far.

Says Bavelier, "We certainly don't mean to convey the message that kids can play video games instead of doing their homework!"

In the educational video game "Supercharged," players can use magnetic fields to navigate mazes. Players also see electric field lines, which can help guide them through the course.

Education Arcade

If Gee gets his way, though, teachers might some day start incorporating computer games into their assignments. Already, scientists and the military use computer games to help simulate certain situations for research or training, he says. Why shouldn't schools do the same thing?

"Kids are beginning to see school as really out of step with culture," Gee says. Making computer technology part of the learning experience could change all that.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have started a project they describe as the "Education Arcade." The project brings together researchers, scholars, game designers and others interested in developing and using computer games in the classroom.

Some kids already go to educational Web sites where they can interact with other kids and help solve problems. At Whyville ( www.whyville.net/), for example, kids from all over the world can chat, build an online identity, and learn math and science as they roam a virtual world.

Looking at the bright side of video and computer games could also help bring kids and adults closer together. Playing games can be a social activity, during which kids and adults learn from each other. By opening up lines of communication and understanding, maybe one day we'll praise video games for saving society, not blame them for destroying it.

On the one hand, there's still a lot more to learn about how video games really affect us. On the other hand, there's also a lot to learn about how to harness them for our benefit.

Part 1 of 2: The Violent Side of Video Games

Word Find: Video Games and Learning

Additional Information

Questions about the Article

Comments:

It is true that I learn easier when I can actually do something with what I learn-like figuring a math problem to unlock a door or to execute an attack!- Zachary, 13

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Part 2 of 2: Video Games-Good or Bad? Last week: The Violent Side of Video Games Here's some news for you to share with your parents and teachers: Video games might actually be good for you. Whenever a wave of teenage violence strikes, movies, TV, or video games often take the heat.

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A Forever Recovery featured on Modern Living with kathy ireland®

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New Study Claims to Find Link Between Violent Video Games and Adolescent Aggression

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New Study Claims to Find Link Between Violent Video Games and Adolescent Aggression

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New Study Claims to Find Link Between Violent Video Games and Adolescent Aggression

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A new study has said that there's a link between adolescent aggression and whether those children played video games in the home.

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Violent video games could make kids more aggressive, study says

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Violent video games could make kids more aggressive, study says

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Whether playing video games has negative effects is something that has been debated for 30 years, in much the same way that rock and roll, television, and even the novel faced similar criticisms in their time.

Purported negative effects such as addiction, increased aggression, and various health consequences such as obesity and repetitive strain injuries tend to get far more media coverage than the positives. I know from my own research examining both sides that my papers on video game addiction receive far more publicity than my research into the social benefits of, for example, playing online role-playing games.

However there is now a wealth of research which shows that video games can be put to educational and therapeutic uses, as well as many studies which reveal how playing video games can improve reaction times and hand-eye co-ordination. For example, research has shown that spatial visualization ability, such as mentally rotating and manipulating two- and three-dimensional objects, improves with video game playing.

To add to this long line of studies demonstrating the more positive effects of video games is a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Vikranth Bejjanki and colleagues. Their newly published paper demonstrates that the playing of action video games - the sort of fast-paced, 3D shoot-em-up beloved of doomsayers in the media - confirms what other studies have revealed, that players show improved performance in perception, attention, and cognition.

In a series of experiments on small numbers of gamers (10 to 14 people in each study), the researchers reported that gamers with previous experience of playing such action video games were better at perceptual tasks such as pattern discrimination than gamers with less experience.

In another experiment, they trained gamers who had little previous experience of playing action games, giving them 50 hours practice. It was shown that these gamers performed much better on perceptual tasks than they had prior to their training. The paper concludes:

The enhanced learning of the regularity and structure of environments may act as a core mechanism by which action video game play influences performance in perception, attention, and cognition.

In my own papers, I have pointed out many features and qualities that make video games potentially useful. For instance, in an educational context, video games can be fun and stimulating, which means it's easier to maintain a pupil's undivided attention for a longer period of time. Because of the excitement, video games may also be a more appealing way of learning than traditional methods for some.

Video games have an appeal that crosses many demographic boundaries, such as age, gender, ethnicity, or educational attainment. They can be used to help set goals and rehearse working toward them, provide feedback, reinforcement, self-esteem, and maintain a record of behavioral change.

Their interactivity can stimulate learning, allowing individuals to experience novelty, curiosity and challenge that stimulates learning. There is the opportunity to develop transferable skills, or practice challenging or extraordinary activities, such as flight simulators, or simulated operations.

Because video games can be so engaging, they can also be used therapeutically. For instance, they can be used as a form of physiotherapy as well as in more innovative contexts. A number of studies have shown that when children play video games following chemotherapy, they need fewer painkillers than do others.

Video games have great educational potential in addition to their entertainment value. Games specifically designed to address a specific problem or teach a specific skill have been very successful, precisely because they are motivating, engaging, interactive, and provide rewards and reinforcement to improve.

But the transferability of skills outside the game-playing context is an important factor. What's also clear from the scientific literature is that the negative consequences of playing almost always involve people who are excessive video game players. There is little evidence of serious acute adverse effects on health from moderate play.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.Read the original article.

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Playing video games is good for your brain

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Whether playing video games has negative effects is something that has been debated for 30 years, in much the same way that rock and roll, television, and even the novel faced similar criticisms in their time.

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Since the early 2000's, school shootings have significantly increased to around 300 shootings per year in America. The early 2000's is also when video games were rising in popularity

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Sometimes Online chat can get intense between two or more players. Insults are being put out to one another and there can be suicidal comments.

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The more you play violent video games, the more it is embedded into your mind.

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Video Game Cyberbullying can Cause Depression or Suicide

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Video Game Cyberbullying can Cause Depression or Suicide

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Many video games give kids the option to host a public chat. A public chat is where you can talk to people in your game. They can be strangers and can insult you and say anything. This can lead to suicide.

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Parents are getting more lenient towards video games nowadays. A majority of children of the age of 6 and under own a tablet, console, or smartphone in U.S.