Persuasive speech against video games Essay

Attention-getter: Whenever I look out from my window at home, nothing but memories come back to me. The house three doors down was the unsuspecting target of the foul balls we would hit when we use to play home run derby. Or my basketball hoop which held many world championships between me being the bulls and my friends being that year’s runner up. In the park across the street, I ended up blackmailing my neighbor, who was a few years older than me, into letting me play football with him and his friends. That’s how much I loved to be outside and play with my friends. As I become aware that my street has become barren from children playing outside, those memories soon fade away into silence. Thesis/Preview: The truth of the matter is that video games have affected the children who play them. Although video games have been quite influential on our generation, video games have had a lot of negative effects on the children of today. First I am going to describe the phenomenon video games has provoked, next I am going to explain the mental and physical health effects and lastly I am going to talk about the impact video games has had on the social skills of children. BODY I. Children in our country have become obsessed with video games. A. Since the start of Atari in 1972, the video game industry has expanded into a 10. 3 billion dollar a year market, it is only getting larger with the growth of technology. And although these games provide much entertainment, it does not come without a cost. Since the rise of video games, more children have become more obese, more violent and less social. (transition) Now that we know a little about the phenomenon lets look at the effects it has on children II. The growth of video games has mental and physical effects on health A. Initially video games consisted of a frog crossing a busy street or two paddles bouncing a ball between each other. Now games have started to border the line of excessive violence, enacting upon some of our deepest desires, but unable to express them due to laws that would be violated. In Grand Theft Auto, you run a round picking up jobs in an imaginary city. These jobs range from killing union workers to stealing pricy automobiles. In Conker’s Bad Fur day, you play as a playful cartoon squirrel that drinks beer and urinates on the enemy to defeat him. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, 90% of the games played today actually reward the player to injure another person and these were the games rated Teen. These types of gratuitous violence portrayed in video games transfer over into the everyday lives of these children. Studies of children exposed to violence have shown that they can become: â€Å"immune† or numb to the horror of violence, imitate the violence they see, and show more aggressive behavior the more they’re exposed to violence. Some children accept violence as a way to handle problems. Studies have also shown that the more realistic and repeated the exposure to violence, the greater the impact on children. For instance, a child in Kentucky ended up bringing a revolver to school and shot 8 students. Police ended up pin-pointing the source to the video games the child had been playing. The child ended up raking in more than 10,000 hours of a shoot em’ up style game that rewarded bonus points for headshots. Even if the games are not violent, another side effect that video games have on the health of children is with exercising. In a pediatrics journal, it states that 9 million kids are overweight, which is three times the amount it was in 1980. I am not stating that video games are the sole proprietor of this drastic increase, but for children, playing a video game usually takes precedent over exercising. With this increase in body mass, children have become more susceptible in acquiring what are usually known as adult diseases such as diabetes. In an Australian Geographic study, when asked what they wanted to do on a sunny day, only 32% of the children wanted to play outside. III. Video Games also have a negative impact on kids’ social skills and experiences. A. Another problem seen in children playing video games is there inability to communicate with their peers. Dr. Ricardo Salguero states that video games are an addictive behavior much like drug dependency. His results from a test on the dependency of video games concluded that 10% of the children, between 8 and 12 years old, playing video games on home consoles or computers, played for more than 4 hours a day – thus eliminating the socialization that would occur through standard outdoor activities like basketball. The more video games played, the more time it cuts away from relationships outside the ones made with characters in video games. Salguero then states that the earlier the child plays video games the worse the interactions the child has with other children are. CONCLUSION Review: From the information compiled by psychiatrists and doctors, we can see the violence, obesity, and lack of social skills that has accumulated since the beginning of video games. That is why I can say video games have a negative effect on children. Parents need to be more aware, not just of the types of games their kids are playing, but of the amount of time they’re playing. Memorable final comment: And when you end up going home I want you to pay attention and listen for the growing silence so that you may physically observe the impact of video games.