Mature rated games do not have negative effects on teenagers and parents should allow their kids to play them. This is because a teenager can handle these type of games, if they come to understand that a video game is nothing like real life. Games are rated mature for language, violence, and blood and gore. This may look like it will ruin children who play them, but it will not. None of these things even have negative effects on children.
Starting with language, kids hear swear words at school and outside in the real world. Also, almost every rap song has vulgar language and swearing in them. Kids should have exposure to hearing this language so they will be able to handle it in the real world. Not to mention, novels read in school sometimes have curse words. In my middle school, there is so much of swearing amongst all the students, I would consider it a normal thing. The occasional bad words in a video game will not have any negative effect on a child. The most swearing any video game has, is 70 times, which is in a game called “scarface” according to www.gamesradar.com, a website which has reviews and information about different games. This is the most swearing a child could possibly hear in a game. Most games have cursing around ten times in the whole game. Again, children probably hear a lot more at and outside of school
As for the violence, no kid in the right state of mind would go out buy a gun and go on a shooting rampage after playing violent video games. If kids can understand the difference between life and games, they will not be negatively influenced by these games.. A study was conducted by Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University and independent researcher Cheryl Olson from the US was published in Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It showed that violent video games don’t have a negative effect on kids behavior, but can actually make a child more calm. This study was done on 377 kids and even the most vulnerable kids showed no sign of violence after playing Mature rated video games.
Blood and gore in video games rarely have a negative effect on adolescents.The first reason why blood and gore don’t influence children is that blood often looks very fake. In most games, the screen just turns slightly reddish. In some games like Halo, the blood is purple, and is obviously not real. Also, children need to be comfortable around blood, because they will have blood tests and will get injured. If parents really don’t want their kids to see blood and gore or any type of graphical content, in most games it can be turned off in settings.
Clearly, Mature rated video games are not as bad for a child as parents think they are. Studies have shown that games do not influence teenagers nearly as much as parents think. Kids hear “strong language” daily at school and our outside community. The violence in the games doesn’t impact the kids behavior as shown in the study, but it calms them down. Blood and gore do not even influence children, and if parents want to, they can turn of blood in the settings for most games. Even reviews of games by parents on “Common Sense Media” say the most popular Mature rated games such as “Call of Duty” is appropriate for 11-14 year olds. Any teenager should be able to handle Mature rated games without suffering any negative effects.
