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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.
Some psychologists theorize that violence is a learned behavior. Children learn by imitation. If this statement holds true, then are we not responsible to mandate the regulation of violent video games accessible to our children? The level of exposure and alarming growth rate of violent behavior being portrayed as an acceptable form of entertainment for children need to end. Children are a blank canvas; what parents, peers and society paint on them will help determine how they will live their lives. Parents need to step up to bat and accept responsibility for the decisions made within their parental control regarding the allowance of detrimental influences in their children's lives because we are entrusted with their welfare.
When 2 young men, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting spree in Littleton, Colorado, killing 15 people, including themselves, there was a public outcry for censorship of every type of entertainment and changes in gun laws despite Eric Harris’s journal entry titled, “Last Wishes” asking that no one be blamed, other than himself and Klebold, for the massacre (“As You Were”, par. 2). After the 1999 school shooting now simply known as Columbine, a “Newsweek” pole showed that, “about half of all Americans want to see the movie industry, the TV industry, computer game makers, Internet services and gun manufacturers and the NRA make major policy changes to help reduce teen violence” (Alter, par. 1). According to Dave Cullen in his article “Let the Litigation Begin” several lawsuits were filed against the parents of the two boys responsible for the shooting spree claiming that Harris’s and Klebold’s families, “breached their duty of care” by allowing their sons to amass a cache of illegal weapons (Cullen, par. 5). Although the boys’ parents denied such allegations, they settled out of court for $1.6 million (Cullen, par. 5)...
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 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
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.
Family environment and the press are two major influences resulting in the recent tragic school shootings. As much as society continues to focus the killing rampages on factors such as television and music, what children are exposed to in reality contributes to the violence. The most recent school shooting in Michigan involved a six-year-old first grader who killed a classmate with a .22 caliber pistol. The news coverage had vanished after two or three days, and I was left wondering what had happened. Considering the fact that the media wore the Columbine incident out, I wanted to know why they did not pay more attention to this school shooting. As evidence did arrive, it was discovered that the child lived in a household where cocaine, heroin, and many other illegal drugs were commonplace. Also in this “home” guns were easily accessible to the child. Children growing up in this type of environment certainly are likely to be held accountable for future violence. Even though I am against the news media presenting too much school violence, Americans should have been deeply disturbed by this shooting because of the child’s young age. The Michigan shooting should have enlightened Americans to the dilemma we face in this country. Two weeks after the Columbine High School shooting, information on the mass murder was still being broadcast on television. The press was feeding young viewers ideas on how to kill their classmates. News was reported how the teenage murderers acquired information regarding building bombs, obtaining guns, smuggling guns into the school, and proceeding to kill their classmates. A mentally unstable teenager could simply watch these news reports and write a book entitled, “How to Slay Your Classmates”. This onslaught was ridiculous and the news coverage should not have been permitted to continue for countless weeks. Society has determined three reasons on which to blame the shootings. First, the nation blamed it on television’s violent programs. Following that, Americans gave the music recording companies the evil eye as well as attacking the gun manufacturers. All of these reasons involve material objects that are unable to think for themselves. Televisions and CD players do not control themselves, people control them. Finally, boundaries controlling the television programs children view should be set by the parents. The same explanation applies to firearms. How can it be a gun’s fault that a person killed another human being?
But why is this? What do they see as “fun” in this. What do they see as “helpful” in this? Why is “fake” murdering kids helpful to these teens? These are questions we don’t know. So why do we do it? It definitely doesn’t keep them healthy. They are not even sleeping in their house! They are staying overnight in borrowed vans and sleeping on futons! Also, According to “Do Games Like 'Grand Theft Auto V' Cause Real-World Violence?”, it states “Quoth Fox & Friends' Steve Doocey: "unfortunately you know it seems every time something bad like this happens we look at "is there a connection between video games and the shooter?" Well, take a look at some people who were described as addicted, from Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Virginia Tech shooter, the Arizona shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, that Norway shooter who Anders Behring [sic], I think he shot 77 people. The Aurora shooter, James Holmes, the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, they're all described as essentially being addicted to video games." This is saying how teens who play video games as a teenager can possibly turn out to be future shooters/killers. During these video games they are pretending to be a shooter and as they gain information on how to be a shooter, they tend to use those skills in real life. This is not what we want. In the same text it also states, “The Telegraph's Nick Allen described the shooter's ‘darker side’ which ‘saw
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.
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)
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)
Thirteen killed and twenty-three wounded. That is the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting orchestrated by Dylan Kleboid and Eric Harris. Twenty-six dead in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting orchestrated by Adam Lanza. The list goes on and on, more and more you see reports of shootings on the news, reports of people dying because someone opened fire in a movie theater, or school classroom, etc. These shootings are giving video games a bad reputation because the investigators are blaming the fact that these people were violent and insane due to the fact that they frequently played violent video games in their free time. What they don’t tell you is that Dylan Kleboid and Eric Harris were both mentally ill with illnesses that would cause violent behavior, and maybe even bring them to orchestrate the school shooting like they did. Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was also mentally ill. He had autism, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and suicidal
Parents should not allow their children to play violent video games because they are at risk of becoming desensitized. Parents often let their kids play violent video games so parents do not have to watch over their kids. Why shouldn’t parents let their kids play violent video games? Parents should not let their kids play violent video games because they will be influenced to make the decision to hurt other people. According to Dr. Phil (renowned psychologist), kids don’t think they are actually killing people, usually when they are shooting someone in the game, they are getting bonus points. Kids are also becoming desensitized by all of the violence. Parents, I just want you to know that, if you are allowing your kids to play these horrific games, then you need to keep a close eye on your kids as they grow up, because you never know if they are going to grow up with such barbaric behavior and then apply it to another human being. Obviously, I do not appreciate the fact that parents allow their kids to play violent video games at such a young age. It is undeniable that your kids are might grow up to be serial killers or homicidal
“YOU SUCK!” “I killed him!” “Head shot!” These are just a few examples of dialogue spoken by children while they are playing violent video games. These video games might seem like harmless fun, but what if the violence in these games is affecting the behavior of young players interacting with others?
“90% of pediatricians and 67% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior among children” ("Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?”). Pediatrics and parents are aware that kids that play violent video games see a change in their behavior. Many cases they see the kids with anger problems and causing them to do violent acts. Violent video games have been around for many years where some older titles, such as ‘Mortal Kombat’ and 'Grand Theft Auto’ both are some of the most controversial ones. The video game industry has been growing and with the large amounts of violent video games being produced. “Total US sales of video game hardware and software increased 204% from 1994 to