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Teen Dating Violence and Video Games

Teen dating violence is the physical, sexual, or psychological/emotional violence in a dating relationship.

Although this problem is called 'teen dating violence' our focus is not just on teenagers but also on tweens (11 and 12 year olds) as well as young adults in their early twenties and so the term "adolescent dating violence" is becoming more popular.

This form of relationship violence is distinguished from people who are married or generally have greater experience in dating relationships. This disinction is important because people with relatively little dating experience will have greater difficulty knowing if some aspects of a relationship are "normal" or not.

Although physical or sexual abuse in a dating relationship is fairly easy to define and identify, other forms of abuse like emotional or psychological abuse are not as easy to explain because they depend a great deal on context.

This nuanced aspect of dating abuse is an important part of what makes it difficult to teach young people about what is - and what isn't - healthy or acceptable; this contextual component is just one of the many reasons that our use of video games to prevent teen dating violence is an ideal solution.

The Impact of Teen Dating Violence

Changing attitudes about teen dating violence and increasing awareness is critical to preventing future abuse. Teen dating violence has been shown to be linked to a number of unhealthy behaviors including:

• Increased alcohol and drug use.
• Teen girls are six times more likely to become pregnant.
• Greater chance of eating disorders, self harm, and suicidal ideation.
• Dropping out of school.
• Greatly increased chance of being in an abusive relationship as an adult, contributing to a cycle of domestic violence.