- Children who play violent games experience an increase in physiological signs of agression. This means that when young people are playing violent video games, their blood pressure and heart rate increases as though they are in an actual, physical fight. There is a study showing that there is a difference in physical arousal between a bloody version of Mortal Kombat and a version with blood turned off.
- Children who play violent games experience an increase in aggressive actions. In 2000, there's a study in which half of the students played a violent video games and half played non-violent video games. After playing the game, they will be given a simple reaction test that put two of the students to a head-to-head competition. Whoever win the test got to punish the loser with an audio blast. Studies shown that student who played violent video games tend to delivered longer and louder audio blasts to their opponents.
In 2006 at Indiana University School of Medicine conducted a research. In this research, 22 students played "Need for Speed: Underground" a racing game which does not contain any violent components. Another 22 students played "Medal of Honor: Frontline" a first-person shooting game which consists of violent component. Researchers immediately scanned the 44 students after they played video games. Evidence shows that the brain scan of the student who played violent video games showed increased activity in amygdala, which stimulates emotions, and decreased activity in prefrontal lobe, which regulates inhibition, self-control and concentration. No activity changes were shown in the brain scan of student who played "Need for Speed".
There are also some incident which happen due to violent game. This is summarisation of several incidents that happened in the past.
- In April 1999, 2 students, Eric Harris, aged 18 and Dylan Klebold, aged 17 killed 12 students and a teacher in Columbine High School Massacre. Both of them were allegedly obsessed with the video game, Doom and before the shootings, Harris claimed that the massacre would be "like Doom". More information about this incident can be found at acolumbinesite
- In June 2003, 18 year old Devin Moore was arrested in Alabama on suspicion of car theft. The police officers brought him to the station and started booking him without any trouble. Minutes later, Devin attacked one of the officer, stole his gun, shot him and another officer and fled down the hall and shot a 911 dispatcher in the head. He then grabbed a set of keys, got in a police car and drove away. After he was captured, he said "Life is a video game. Everybody's got to die sometime." He said that he was addicted to Grand Theft Auto.
In conclusion, I feel that it doesn't even matter how long and what type of game you play regardless of violence or non-violence as long you don't get too aggressive or involve in violent activities. Here is a site to help children from negative effects in violent video games : http://www.psychologymatters.org/videogames.html
