The first set of cold, clammy hands close around my ribs. Another surrounds my ankle, my arm, my neck. With an annoyed sigh, I restart the level for the third time as the words "Game over" flash on the screen. Does this sound familiar? This scene is very common among modern zombie apocalypse games. While the titles of these games vary, the theme remains the same: fighting for your life. Users are thrown into a world where they must fight violence thrown at them with their own violence. The sheer thrill that comes with it can be very exciting and relates well to many young people due to its life and death component. Suddenly, eight-year-olds are armed with machine guns to blow off the heads of shuffling zombies, bulging-eyed aliens and, most commonly, molded soldiers. But as video games continue to be mass-produced, the cognitive and social skills of young Americans are suffering. With the mental health of the new generation at stake, is it really justifiable to pass off the purchase of the new violent video game as innocent fun? Cognitive skills are skills that allow children to grow and develop mentally into adults. They are the tools for understanding the building blocks of academic material and, more importantly, how it all fits together. Being able to prioritize problems, understand them and find solutions are cognitive skills. Interestingly, violent video games mimic these skills in how players are confronted with an enemy that they must defeat within a certain amount of time. In a sense, when the player defeats an opponent, he has solved a problem. Very often the opponent is defeated simply by having the “bigger gun”. The problem lies in the fact that users begin to gain confidence in their virtual victories through...... middle of paper... media sources that accelerate the world's decline into aggressive stupidity. Does a seven-year-old really need a game about blowing the heads off of rebel soldiers to make them happy? Will it help them relate to the other seven-year-olds in their class at school or help them learn how to take a math test? No. The fact is that the harm of exposing developing children to violence at an early age outweighs the benefit of providing them with easy entertainment. If nothing else, it makes you wonder what the world of video games will have disintegrated into in ten years if this is what kids play now. Works Cited Shin, Grace. "Video games: a cause of violence and aggression." Serendip. 202.2 (2011): 1. Web. 22 September 2011. .Muir, Hazelnut. “The violent games people play.” New scientist. 184.2470(2004): 26. Print