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Violence has always been a problem in our video-game-addicted world, and the blame can be put on modern video games.

"Gears of War" has an over-exaggeration of blood and "Grand Theft Auto V" features crime and bank robbing. I believe that these games and games like them are the cause of violence in young teens and adults alike.

A 1961 experiment conducted by Albert Bandura, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, showed that kids model aggression by watching it - a practice called observational learning. In the experiment, kids would watch an adult be mean to a doll and then they would imitate it, doing exactly as the adult "role models" did. When the adult was nice to the doll, the kids were nice as well. This shows that kids learn how to behave from what they see.

The parents are a big part in how kids behave. Letting kids play violent games and not teaching them that it's wrong to do what they see can only cause violence. It's ultimately the parents' responsibility to make sure their child's environment is free of the violence they see on the TV.

Many parents are violent themselves, causing the children to act the same way. Children learn from seeing and modeling what their parents do, and in these games they get rewarded for violent behaviors with points or money.

This influences kids to think it's an easy way to get cash, leaving it up to the parents to teach them that it's wrong and to punish them for it properly.

The type of violence can also have a big effect on how the children react. Seeing shooting and killing could make children violent because they have no outlet to release that anger.

Outlets such as playing sports or learning how to fight can sometimes help release this aggression. Some parents argue that outlets can be the games themselves, claiming that they help take away the urges and help teach kids what is wrong.

Studies show the theory that they help relieve aggression is incorrect. Over 130 studies with 130,000 participants showed that overall thoughts of aggression increased when playing violent games. They not only increased some behaviors, but they decreased empathy for others, and the ability to want to help others decreased.

So, before you play a violent game or let your kids watch you play a violent game, look at the statistics and understand reality.

Violent video games can affect kids, making them model the behavior just as in the doll experiment.

Teens get into drugs and crime just by modeling what they see on the TV, giving them a reason to be "cool" and try to live a life that they see.

We need to take away the violence, at least from younger kids, and give them more educational games.

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Violent video games can be a bad influence for children

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Violence has always been a problem in our video-game-addicted world, and the blame can be put on modern video games. "Gears of War" has an over-exaggeration of blood and "Grand Theft Auto V" features crime and bank robbing. I believe that these games and games like them are the cause of violence in young teens and adults alike.

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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The Supreme Court is weighing arguments for and against a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The dispute is over whether it is a violation of free speech to ban them. But the issue is really about public health-the health of those who play and the health of everyone they encounter.

Certainly it is good for children to play-in fact, kids are not getting enough free play today. Kids learn many things through play, especially friendly rough-and-tumble play which helps the brain develop in multiple ways including building social competence.

Some people argue that activities like videogame play that on face value seem to be bad for you are really good for you. Steven Johnson points out how much more complex popular culture is today than in the past, including the complexity of videogames (compare PacMan with The Sims games). He argues that the increased complexity promotes intelligence. For example, when you play a videogame, it is often a frustrating learning experience that requires you to repeatedly problem solve to learn the game. In fact, James Paul Gee suggests that you even learn "the scientific method" through the necessary trial and error of figuring out how to meet goals in the game.

According to these criteria, playing constructive and prosocial games like The Sims can be "good for you" with at least one caveat-as long as you have a balanced life with real-life face-to-face friendships and enjoyment in socializing.

Okay, so that was the good news. Now, the bad news.

Playing violent video games is different from playing positive, constructive games. In fact, violent videogames may have an even more powerful influence than violent television and movies, whose risks have been documented for decades. While violent videogames may promote some complex problem solving and coordination skills as well, they may also have multiple negative effects. Here are three related to moral functioning.

First, in violent video game play, the player learns to associate violence with pleasure (rewards for hurting another character). This may undermine moral sensitivity. Under normal conditions, human emotional wiring is designed to abhor violence and feel rewarded for helping others. Those who play violent video games may build opposite intuitions.

Second, children practice over and over the actions available in a game. The player may practice simulated violent behavior hundreds if not thousands of times. Violent games allow and encourage virtual harm (e.g., burning people alive in Postal2). Is this what you want your children to be practicing for hours on end?

Third, video games can be habit-forming because they give immediate rewards for learning. Child and adolescent brains are typically susceptible to negative habit-forming as their brains are under development until the middle 20s.

Society should have a say about the availability of violent media. It is unfair to put the policing of media products onto the backs of parents when there are so many human-caused toxic elements to monitor in a child's life today (food, air, water, soil, toys, personal products) and parents do not receive the information they need to help make decisions. Parents could spend 24/7 being bodyguards of their children's every move because of the endless onslaught of risky products and media.

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Playing Violent Video Games: Good or Bad?

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The Supreme Court is weighing arguments for and against a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The dispute is over whether it is a violation of free speech to ban them. But the issue is really about public health-the health of those who play and the health of everyone they encounter.

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Throughout the years, video games have demented the brains of young children from all over the world. Now, more the ever, young minds have been affected by violent video games causing them to resort to actual violence in real life. In addition, as a result of violent games, it has caused the youth of our society to become less sensitive when it actually occurs. According to psychologytoday.com, violence in video games have a powerful influence to its audience, as players learn to associate violence in the game with pleasure. As a result, when something violent occurs in live action, children who have played those kinds of games are use to seeing it happen since they have practiced it for hundreds of times.