Violent video games have been linked to an increase in aggressive behavior in adolescents

Exposure to violent video games by children has been proven to be linked to an increase in aggression. This topic has recently become under analysis, and professionals such as Craig Anderson have found that this aggression has lead to less caring and more socially awkward human beings. The repercussions of this include not only increased aggression but can even lead to kids shooting each other. Many of these researchers have used meta-analysis as a way of analyzing the data and coming to conclusions about the behavior and thoughts about these children from repeated and specific exposure.

Video game scripts and social expectations are translated into real life

As children repeatedly play a video game, they start to act and perform like the character of the game. With violent games such as Grand Theft Auto, this presents a problem because the scripts to these games are to fight back whenever someone in the game says or does something you don't like. What this does to children after a long exposure to it, is that it makes them think that this type of behavior is acceptable and that it is common to act in such as way. What it also does is makes it hard for adolescents to distinguish the lines between fantasy and reality. Psychology professor at the University of Maryland, Kent Norman who specializes in cognitive behavior and human/ computer interactions, gives his input about these video games and how it affects children.

Exposure to violent video games can lead to life-changing problems
Not only does constant exposure to violent video games cause aggressive behavior, but it has also been proven to cause children to be less sympathetic and less sensitive to pain. This can lead to the breaking of controllers or video game consoles from rage or even worse it can lead to a child bringing a gun to a public place or school and reenacting what they did in the video game. In 1997, Evan Ramsey a student at Bethel Regional High School entered school one day with a 12-gauge shotgun and killed 2 people, blaming his shooting on the video game "Doom" he use to play. During an 2007 interview, Ramsey expressed his confusion when he said, "I did not understand that if I... pull out a gun and shoot you, theres a good chance your not getting up." Though this is one example, many school shootings have been examined to be linked to an obsession with violent video games such as the Columbine Massacre and the shooting at Virginia Tech.

Practice Videos

Americans are wasting approximately 23 hours on social networking and texting each week

According to a study done in 2013 by the ad agency the Buntin Group on the website eMarketer.com, Americans are spending around 23 hours on social media and texting every week. From that, they observed that 87% of those people answered yes to logging into their email or Facebook weekly. Not only that but email still wins for most amount of time spend on a networking platform with a whopping 7.8 hours, closely followed by Facebook and Youtube. What they found to be surprising was the fact that Google+ had users that spent more time on it than Twitter. On the other hand, they observed that over half of the web users said that next year they were looking to reduce the amount of time on social media and focus more on relationships in person. 

Personalization is not as strongly found, as it should be in the article

This article could use many components of personalization including more conversational language. Many readers may not be as interested in the topic as others, so when they see confusing words such as "tech platforms" or "niche social networks", they lose all the interest that they had in the article and continue to search for a better article. The article is also focused on the statistics, including many numbers and percentages that drown out the actual text and analysis that is in the article. I think that the author should have just referenced the charts that are already included in the article, and include all of the percentages and statistics making it easier to read. 

Embedded links and the ability to share on different social media outlets make Interactivity evident

As shown on the left, the interactive "sharing bar" in this article allowed you to let your followers of any social media network read what you just read. What was extra special was that it followed you up and down the article, allowing you to share it at any moment. Another component of Interactivity is embedded links, which this article shared in the first paragraph. It allowed you to look more into the groups that were active in this survey by embedding their companies website into it. Another point of advice I would give to the author, is to include subheadings to help the reader find exactly what they might be looking for. One thing that I would change about the article is that I would allow the user to click on the graphs, and be able to view a larger picture of the said graph. This helps the user to not strain their eyes to view the data presented.

By including graphs about the data found, the author helps include Contiguity into the article

In this article it includes many graphs and data that helps present the results to the reader. The graphs are married into the article by placing them in the exact spot that the data on it is being explained. This helped to reinforce the staggering data about the amount of hours people spend on social media networks. The graphs are also self explanatory, with an including insight about the data below the graph, as well as the exact percentages found next to the bar with the respected social networking sites.

The reduction of kick-outs is found in functioning embedded links, up to date designs, but is not found in the ads

Functioning embedded links give readers the ease of not having to find the link that the article was suppose to bring them too, which destroys the readers attention to the article and website. The large, urban font helps bring in readers compared to an out of date design that takes some time to load. One thing that I would change to help further reduce kick-outs is to get rid of the few ads that are found on the sides of the article. As you can see in the image, their many colors and large font help distract the reader from paying attention to the article and that reduces the amount of knowledge that they are going to take out of the article.