There is no doubt that media does have influences on people’s lives, it might dictate how people act, it might change how people think and feel, but could it get us so sucked in that it makes us want to replicate scenarios we see/experience or live with or like people in the movies and characters in video games?
There have been numerous instances of people becoming so addicted to video games that they play too much and because of the stress and the continuous play without taking care of their daily health it eventually leads to them passing away. Most recently, and probably the most ridiculous a “Tokyo man marries video game character”. In a Nintendo DS video game called ‘Love Plus’ players are allowed to create characters and is characterized as a Dating Game.
In our TV Delinquency Debate reading, there are three basic propositions of the influence of media on delinquents which all say there is a strong correlation between the amount of exposure and influence on children making them delinquents. Apart from people marrying video game characters, which does indicate a high level of influence on that particular individual, what about all the other violent and irrational games that exist? GTA is one of those games which are extremely violent and vulgar where players are required to drive irrationally, kill, have sex and run away from the police.
Though the companies who release these games have the age warnings and disclaimers, they are rarely ever followed, how can we be sure that kids these days won’t be taught how to live life by these video games? How can we be sure that kids won’t run around killing, having sex with prostitutes and run away from police? How can we be sure that they won’t drive incredibly fast and irrationally as they do when they have fun playing video games?
Tokyo Man Marries Video Game Character: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html
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