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violent video games increase crime rate essay
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Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, and Seung-Hui Cho all have a few things in common, they are all school shooters that have killed and injured a combined total of 149 human beings and are or were believed to be avid violent video game players, who also committed suicide immediately after carrying out their attacks. To the public, school shooters seem to share a direct connection to playing violent video games and that playing them leads to violent behavior. Violent videogames have become a highlight in the media and national debate for this very reason but, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a causative connection between participants of violent videogames manifesting violent behaviors. The media provides biased information that misleads citizens into believing that said link is well established and accepted. I argue that parents should make responsible and well informed decisions in regards to their child’s videogame activities in spite of the lack of scientific research. In the cases of school shootings that took place at Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary, Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University, the media highly publicized the fact that the perpetrators were avid video gamers, but why is this important? The media want’s your attention and they are more than willing to say almost anything to get it. They reported that the perpetrators were avid gamers with the implication that there is a well establish connection between the two when there is not. They exploit the fear of parents and concerned citizens by not including relevant corresponding information in order to leave you more interested lea... ... middle of paper ... ...r easily purchase them without serious consideration for their youths wellbeing and evaluate for themselves if any videogames including violent ones, are beneficial for their children. Take for example “the case of the eight-year-old boy in Slaughter, Louisiana, who over the summer picked up a gun and killed his elderly caregiver after playing Grand Theft Auto IV”. At first glance it seems like the videogame might be the catalyst here, but upon closer inspection we can see that the big issue here is that there was the eight year old child had both unmonitored access to violent media that is intended for ages 17 and up, and unmonitored access to a loaded weapon. Adequate parenting in spite of the lack of supported scientific research being applied to this situation would have more than likely resulted in the survival of the elderly caregiver of the young boy.
The allegation that videogames cause violent behavior in children has been present as long as videogames themselves. Some researchers said that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was one intense gamer. “Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech Shooter was seen by his roomates as odd because he never joined them in video games.”(Beresin) This debate will continue to go on in this country as long as there are horrific crimes that occur. There is much written in the research regarding this issue, and many differing views. The research that is presented in the next few paragraphs supports the theory that it is not the graphic video games that produce aggressive behavior, but other factors in a child’s life that create violent actions.
The Columbine high school, located in Littleton, Colorado, never expected that two of their older students would turn against them and commit such a crime. Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, were “social outcasts” and were fascinated by Goth culture and violent video games. The major question that has been spinning in everyone’s mind since that day is, “Did the video games and media influence them to kill, or did they have a mental illness; born as murders?”
On April 20, 1999, in a small town of Littleton, Colorado, two high school students by the name of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris executed their plan to kill hundreds of their fellow students. With a multitude of guns, knives, and bombs, they walked down the halls of Columbine High School and started their massacre. In the end, twelve students, one teacher, and the murderers were dead with twenty one more injured. Klebold and Harris were both highly intelligent boys who came from a solid household. Both boys had also played sports and enjoyed working with computers. The motive for shooting at school is very unclear. One of the speculated motives was the influence of the highly violent video game Doom (Rosenburg). The video game Doom is about the main protagonist, DoomGuy, the toughest marine anyone has ever seen. After assaulting his commanding officer for trying to order him to open fire upon innocent civilians, he was sent to Mars as punishment. Meanwhile, evil has risen from the depths of the red planet. Being the only combat ready soldiers in a million miles, it is his and his squad mates duty to track down and kill a variety of evil creatures; such as murderous demon minotaurs, robot spiders, and meatball-looking demons. While DoomGuy was on look out, his squad has been viciously killed off by the many creatures of the red planet. Now it is up to DoomGuy to cleanse the planet from the evil with his only set back being that his squad mates took all of the guns and all DoomGuy has left is a pistol. Video games allow the players to experience the immense world the game has to offer. From a futuristic sci-fi shooter to a medieval action adventure, players are able to live out the adventures of the many heroes and villains and explore many different worlds within the broad setting any one game has to offer. Nevertheless, since the late 1900’s, video game industry has
With all these violence that had been going on within 2011 and 2012, the media question the safety of children playing violence game. Can the shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook and Columbine be a link to violence video game? An article from Parenting.com, Sasha Emmons, 2013, discuss about the December’s horrific massacre in Newtown questions about guns in media and their connection to real-life violence. They brought up the topic about the killer of Sandy Hook, Adam Lanza play the violence game Call of Duty. They question how much should parents focus on their child concerning on their child aggressive copycat behavior (Emmons, 2013). Parents all over the world are concern about their children watching and playing violence game. Some parent report about their child behavior. Should they worries when their child would image that house hold supply to be a gun, going around the house making shooting noise?
Desensitization from video games creates a biological response that leads to a lack of empathy and more aggressive behaviors. Furthermore, violence in video games is rewarded, making one more likely to repeat the behavior in real life. Finally, video games allow people to take on roles, and along with one’s inability to separate reality from fantasy, people will take on these roles in real life, leading to many of the recent mass shootings. The debate on video games and violence will carry major significance over these coming years. Although violent video games will not necessarily be banned, there might be moves to educate parents about the dangers of violent video games so that their children can be monitored in the games they choose. However, the debate will not be completely solved. Video games are a multimillion dollar industry and the companies may pay psychologists to agree with their sentiments, prolonging the debate. Although video games are some of the most popular items in the world to own, one must take caution in purchasing them, especially violent
People have always been looking for a reason why horrible things happen. The media is quick to blame video games as the target and cause of many shootings that have occurred, ever since Columbine and Quake. People have been blaming video games for violence for years now, ever since violent video games have been made. News reports blame video games more and more for each shooting, telling the public how this person played video games for x amount of hours a day, and that video games caused him or her to shoot people, and how video games encourage and reward violence. Anti-video game lobbyists have been campaigning to have violence removed from video games, citing resources that they themselves have created as reasons for such, poorly done studies where they confirm that kids are more aggressive through how much hot sauce they put on someone’s fries. While unbiased studies of video games and their links to violence are hard to come by, recent research has shown that video games do not in fact have a casual link to violence, and may even have the opposite effect. Violent video games have nearly no link to violence in teens or adults.
“The Columbine shooters played violent video games; that has to be a factor in their decision to brutally murder their classmates!” Society is quick to point fingers and approach unknown situations with a causal mentality that often results in a false accusation of an innocent bystander. With the advent of the video game era, psychologists have debated their effect on the minds of their youthful audience. Throughout the multitude of studies and the perpetual debate, society still lacks an absolute answer. With this knowledge, when it comes to video games and their impact on the minds of children, researchers must consult a wide variety of subjects with an open mind about the potential outcomes. I conducted my research by examining my personal experience, analyzing studies refuting both sides of the argument, trying to view the American fascination with violence through an outside perspective, and reviewing the thought processes that lead the members of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in order to gain a full perspective of the issue. What correlation exists, if any, between violent video games and the violent tendencies that children exhibit after exposure to said media? Throughout my research, I have discovered that a trend does exist, but it manifests after the child has encountered puberty because of the heightened levels of testosterone that accompany this phase of development, and the trend relies heavily on other factors in a violent disposition. The age factor generally fails to exist in the violent tendencies argument; this is intriguing in that the majority of violent videogames are targeted toward an older audience. In order to truly understand the violent tendencies of mankind, we must first analyze these ...
Whether violent media content leads to real-life violence is always debatable. And in recent years, school shootings have made video games a new focus of public concern and scientific research. In public opinion, video games cause more aggression in comparison to traditional violent media contents because video games have more features of interactivity, "due to the active engagement and participation of players" (Hummer and Wang et al. 137). But more and more reports tell us that video games are not the main cause of school shooting issues; rather it is the negligence of parents, schools, and communities.
In this case, the moral crusaders, politicians, and lawmakers benefitted from this moral panic, as tough-on-crime legislation and the supposed link between high school shooters and video game playing assuaged the fears of a concerned public. Moreover, since the targeted group is largely unable to vote, politicians do not run the risk of losing electoral support nor would they face risks of lobbying. Ultimately, as per Sternheimer (2007), the explanation that violent video games causes school shootings lead to a view of white, middle-class teenaged shooters as victims of the negative effects of video games, rather than “culpable criminals” (p. 17). In doing so, this moral panic decontextualizes violence and overlooks several other aspects of these shooters’ lives that warrant a more critical
In 1998, the US software industry sold $6.3 billion worth of video games (see Unknown). Not bad for an industry that didn't exist 25 years ago! Yet despite its continued growth, all is not well in the video game industry. School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Conyers, Georgia and many other towns have shocked the nation (see Malcolm). Understandably, grieving parents and sympathetic citizens are searching for a cause for this "outbreak" of youth violence. It is natural to assume, "when children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." (see Maker)
In Sauer’s article “Violent Video Games: The Effects of Narrative Context and Reward Structure On In-Game and Postgame Aggression,” James, a gradate of phycology, goes in detail to why children choose violence or less violent games. Also, how the result of violent gaming affects the actions of the children shortly after the finish playing. Overviewing the work of physiological professor Helen Fisher, Sauer concludes that playing a mass variety of games can have different effects on a child. Documented by Sauer, “To the extent that this task is representative of real-world risk taking in a driving context, Fischer et al. found that racing games can have negative effects on traffic safety: increasing risk-taking behavior, risk-promoting cognitions, and positive attitudes toward reckless driving” (Sauer 206). A child does not have to shoot a gun in a game such as Call of Duty or rob a bank in GTA V, the end result is that the child would think these things are accepted in society. Most games today that children play depicted some type of violence. However, parents neglect that fact the games have warnings for violence, language, and even nudity. In my own personal experience, kids will ask for the most trending games at the time and parents will buy the game to satisfy the needs and
The early 1990s brought with it increases in technology and violent video games emerged with “person-on-person violence” which include games such as two graphic fighting games, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and a first-person-shooter zombie infestation game called Doom. By this time, youth violence had dramatically increased and peaked to one of the highest levels on record and various groups of school shootings shocked the United States. The more drastic response to this was the belief that video games were training young children to become murderers by simply playing these violent video games (Ferguson). In view of consumers’ violent nature, the vast majority of research concerning video games has focused on “the way game play impacts anti-social behavior” (Tear). The video game industry was aware of this issue and had to improvise quickly on a solution or there would have been a noticeable decrease in sales. Parents were and still are ...
Violence across the nation has become an overwhelming, terrifying problem. One rising issue within the nation today is violent video games. Video games that show acts of violence can take a toll on those who play it and encourage those same acts inside of their everyday life. However, another issue that does not only affect the people involved and an entire community, but the whole country is gun violence. In Rebecca J. Rosen’s article “Violence is Contagious”, she compares violence to a disease, as it spreads quickly and infects humans of the nation. Violent video games and gun violence are directly related with each other.
Although violent video games are thought to encourage real world violence, they actually help to prevent it. I am focusing on violent video games and how they affect juveniles because I feel that this issue needs to be looked at in the criminal justice community. It is an unnecessary distraction to blame the actions of a disturbed youth on a form of entertainment that has been used by millions of people without incident. A review article published in The Psychiatric Quarterly found that many studies which claim to indicate an increase in aggression due to video games are, in fact, biased! Once the bias is taken into account, the studies no longer find any correlation between youths who play violent video games and youths who demonstate aggression and violent behavior. (Ferguson, 2014)
They get attached so easily with the video games that they don 't realize their ability to concentrate in the studies is diminishing day by day. According to By Rebecca Hagelin (2013) children who played violent video games are involved in active shootings at school and other public places. "The impact of playing violent video games has drawn heightened scrutiny since the massacre in Newtown, Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza, troubled by mental health issues and his parents ' divorce, reportedly also played violent video games daily, for hours on end" (Rebecca Hagelin, 2013, p. 5). According to Anderson and Bushman (2001) lack of parental oversight has become the primary issue on children grabbing their attention more towards violent video games than studying for their test. As the researchers analyze the statistics most of the parents are irresponsible towards their children who are willing to purchase video games and children being more careless and making a habit of playing violent video