Violence and obesity

When reading the articles about obesity, violence and aggression, I definitely felt like I believed video game use does influence all three of them. As obesity becomes more and more of an issue with today’s youth, video game use and production increases. The article said that obesity has increase in the past 3 decades. I would say that in the past 3 decades the number of video game systems and available video games has also increased. The recent introduction of the Wii seems to be a change in the right direction, if the child is playing the sports games that gets them up and moving. It would be interesting to compare a child that only used the physical games on the Wii with those that played average video games only requiring the use of your thumbs.

As far as violence and aggression are concerned, I think this is also related. Even with my elementary students, they will play games at recess that look way to violent to be allowed in school. Sometimes they say it is from a game or TV show they watch. They are definitely imitating what they see and that is not always a good thing! One of the articles mentioned “intense engagement” which I think is a major factor. If the child can’t separate play from reality that will definitely cause some problems. Doing something in real-life that they would do in the game could be dangerous. The examples of the school shootings show that it can even be deadly, although those are the extreme cases.

So what can be done to prevent all of these things from happening? I guess that parents really need to monitor what their children are doing. They should also stick to the ratings on the video games. Games are rated mature for a reason and those that are younger should not play them. I don’t think simply following the rating is the answer, but it sure would help. One article mentioned how parents seem to screen what their children watch on TV on in the movies more than they pay attention to what video games they are playing. Parental involvement is key in keeping violent games away from young children. Having a conversation with their children about the games they play and the messages they send is also important.