How to combat the effects of violent video games on children“Stay alive at all costs! Kill the bad guys! Headshot!" These are just a few examples of the spoken dialogue between children playing violent video games like Call of Duty and Halo. Twenty years ago this would not have been the typical gaming dialogue between children, but with the increase in popularity of violent video games this is becoming the norm. Playing these violent video games is just another way to pass the time on a Saturday morning or afternoon after school. However, this pastime has repercussions. Studies have shown that constantly playing a Violent video games lead to psychological, mental and social disorders in children. Some extreme cases of the effects have been observed in tragedies such as the 1999 Columbine shooting, the Virginia Tech massacre and, more recently, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. each criminal was known to be an avid video gamer and practiced their crime using violent first-person shooter video games. The repercussions of playing violent video games can be mitigated if parents take the initiative to discuss the inappropriateness of violence, limit the amount of time their children play video games, and understand the ESRB system. Completely weaning children away from violent video games would be extremely difficult. According to the organization Children NOW (an organization “for people who care about children and want to ensure they are the highest public priority”) 89% of video games feature some form of violence and 50% have some form of violence serious. These numbers indicate that the ultimate goal of the game is to commit an act of violence, ranging from killing or assaulting a character... at the center of the card... a problem for the new generation of parents. Onguardonline.gov (a government website designed to inform Americans about the dangers of media and technology) suggests keeping video games in the common area. In this way, children are put in situations where they have to interact with their family members. “A child who has no other risk factors for violence, and plays for an hour a day for a couple of days, is not going to become a school shooter” (Anderson). Everything is fine in moderation. It is up to the parent to monitor their child's interaction with violent video games, discuss the negative aspects associated with the application of violence in daily life, and encourage other social engagements other than video games. Parents should familiarize themselves with the repercussions of playing violent video games and understand how they can protect their children from them..