The days of sending the kids outside to play for entertainment have passed for most families. Kids prefer to stay indoors, playing on the video game console they chose to use. There have been tons of studies about this behavior, showing some alarming trends that may be caused by some of them.
The games that are based on aggression and risk-taking are the most popular, as well as the most damaging. Dig a little deeper into the matter. You will also find the other side of the coin, with people stating that it does not affect their children in a bad way and that society is the one to blame for their behavior.
Whichever way you believe is your choice, but this author has dealt with it firsthand and knows how dangerous those awesome video games can be. Let’s take a deeper look into this worldwide dilemma so you can make your own educated decision.
- Aggression – If you take the time to sit down and watch some of the games your teen is playing, you will quickly see that many of them require aggression to succeed. That not only includes walking around but driving as well. Some of them even give you bonus points for outrunning the cops in the game, which leads to teen drivers thinking that it is a game to race around and avoid the police cruisers. Aggressive drivers cause more accidents, so it is safe to say that video games cause young drivers to make bad, aggressive choices rather than driving defensively, as taught.
- Uncaring – Another aspect of many driving games teaches children from a young age that it is fun to be in a fender bender, especially if it is due to an aggressive driver in the other vehicle. In the games, the cars can either be replaced by stealing them or repaired in a shop. In both instances, the concept of accidents being bad is left out, so teenage drivers are unsure how lousy driving can affect others. For example, every accident they get into will go against their driving record, and even if they go through an online comparison site, like iSelect, they will end up paying more for coverage.
- Sleeplessness – One major cause of road accidents is a tired driver falling asleep at the wheel or not paying attention because they are trying to stay awake. Teenagers will play a video game that catches their attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This causes them to become sleepy, agitated, and, to be blunt, like a ball of fire ready to explode. The point here is that they will be too exhausted to drive safely, but since they have to make that run to the store for munchies or off to work to pay for those snacks, they are out on the roads when they shouldn’t be.
- Driving Decisions – Everything discussed above all boils down to one major thing; teenagers who play violent driving games will not make good decisions when driving. They will not hold back and drive defensively when they can zip through traffic, cutting off people that do not cooperate and causing other drivers to act aggressively. It is like a huge chain reaction that one driver can cause, simply by driving erratically and dangerously, which is exactly how you must drive to succeed in the game. It is hard for teenagers to separate the two when they spend so much time on the game.
That is all that can be said about how video games affect teenage driving habits. There will obviously be some young drivers that follow the laws and drive safely, but many will not. They will naturally assume that the way they drive in the game is how they should drive in the real world.
Now, this is not to say that all teenage drivers are unsafe or that teenagers should not be allowed to play video games. Instead, they just need to be sat down and taught the differences between actual driving and video game driving. This one crucial step will reduce the number of young driver accidents, which affects everyone involved in the accident, including family and friends.
