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Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence
Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence
Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence
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Sometimes people believe that video games are the leading cause for real world violence. Imagine you are involved in a murder. The police has 3 suspects and investigates his or her personal background. One man is an alcoholic. A woman comes home with a lot of stress. You an innocent individual is playing video games. You have a shelf full of M rated violent video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. The police take you in for questioning, suddenly you are in jail for violent activity. This stereotype of violent acts is associated with people who play violent video games. When a crime has been committed by a youth. Many people point at the game as the source of the crime and will contribute more problems. On the other side people who play the game finds …show more content…
Is because it trains players how to kill. A teacher at the University of Central Florida says that, “ Video games often require players to simulate violent actions, such as stabbing, shooting, or dismembering someone with an ax, sword, chainsaw, or other weapons.” (Dietz). Once again this flawed statement has holes. These violent actions have the same motion of any other actions such as playing a sport like Kendo or baseball. Shooting a gun in a game is a lot different than shooting a real gun. Real guns cost a lot more money than those controller guns and they weigh differently. The recoil and sound is a lot different in a game.
In the end, people still assume that violent video games contribute to real world violence. If all the violent video games are gone, then youth will not have a way to vent their frustrations. If the case is that “Since 1994 - 2014, the total amount of games and hardware increased 204%, while violent crimes fell 37% and murders by juveniles fell by 76%,” then we can’t blame video games. People instead should encourage others to play more games than play less. Don’t we all want to live in a less violent
The article “Do Video Games Kill” written by Karen Sternheimer addresses the widespread question; are video games the cause for “young killers”? (220) Sternheimer believes concern for the influence of video games may have on youth is spiraling out of control. She puts most of the blame for this out of control concern on the media. She also writes some about the politicians and the Juvenile Justice System. Sternheimer suggests that there are other factors to blame for violent behavior: poverty, the neighborhood, unemployment, family violence, divorced parents and mental illness (218). While it may be that juvenile crimes have declined, and personal backgrounds effect actions, it cannot be proven that video game violence has no to little effect on
Now a day every video game has something violent going on. Such as in 2010 the top 20 games out in the market were violent related. When a kid sees in a video game that he can beat someone else up and get away with it they think they can do that in real life. This will increase bullying and kids are being taught not to bully. Every kid plays video games even if it’s a racing game or a shooting game. In 2008, 97% of kids from the age of 12-17 played video games. Most M rated games have sexual violence and when a kid sees that in a game and then beats the girl up. The crime rate for rape will increase as it has. A study in 2009 found that it only takes a child four minutes of playing a game to make him have aggressive and violent thoughts going through his head. The critics of violent video game has that bully has increase 32% because of violent video games. Also in the study when a child sees blood when beating up or killing someone in a game he will have more aggressive thoughts than normal.
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.
Since the 1970 video games have become more popular than ever before. Generating 11.7 billions of dollars of sells every year or more, the video game industry is considered one of the largest industries in this century. However, video games have been a topic of controversy. With the sales of violent video games going up and the increased violence in schools and teenagers, video games are always to blame. Many people speculate that video games are the cause on why many teenagers have developed aggressive and violent behavior, are desensitize to violence, and the increase violence in schools and public places. In contradiction, video games have little or no fault in teenagers’ violent behavior and shouldn’t always be blamed.
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.
One would be hard-pressed to find a household without any video gaming devices. In fact, over eighty percent of American households some sort of gaming device. On top of all that, violent video games have surged in popularity, occupying over 50% of the 30 top video games sold in 2015 (Kain). In light of recent mass shootings, video games are routinely accused as the culprit that influences one to violence. Researchers all over the world have tried to establish a causal relationship between video games and violence. Some researchers have come to the conclusion that video games, specifically violent ones, spark aggression. However, other researchers have come up with the opposite conclusion, that the studies that portray video games as detrimental
In the last two decades, video games have become popular, especially violent video games such as Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, and Grand Theft Auto, among others. According to Anderson and Bushman, “[a]bout 10% of children aged 2 to 18 play console and computer video games more than 1 hour per day; among 8- to 13-year-old boys, the average is more than 7.5 hours per week” (354). Due to their explicit violent content, violent video games have been seen as a negative influence in society by promoting aggression in the real world, thus increasing violence in society. Most people assume that playing violent video games has negative effects on players because violent video games create aggressive behaviors on the people who play them. However, studies show that violent video games bring some benefits, and people who normally choose to play violent video games are the ones that have been raised or have been exposed to a violent environment.
At this day in age we bask in the luxury of having easy access to advanced technology at our disposal. From the World Wide Web, to cell phones, music, movies and video games the human race has thought of any and everything to keep us entertained. Over the years studies have shown reasonable concerns regarding the long-term effects of video games. These games can desensitize gamers to real life violence, which is usually seen in the younger crowd. The studies especially hit on the games containing player-on-player violence. Though these games are extremely entertaining and can get kids to settle down for a while, if not properly supervised, they can produce adverse effects. Other studies have shown that video games can be used as way to yield positive outcomes such as, good problem solving skills, cooperation in a group and the ability to flow. Although there has been psychological research on children learning through the actions of others some believe that children are automatically able to distinguish between what is just a game and what is reality. The longer they are allowed on their game system the more they become convinced that their games are real. Some researchers believe violent video games can channel the aggression of the child but the parents are to blame for what happens to the child after playing an excessive amount over a period of time. Children can become preoccupied with these violent video games which have been proven to be the cause of poor social skills, uncontrollable aggression and a false reality.
According to Henry Jenkins, an American Media Scholar and professor at MIT, “young people in general are more likely to be gamers —90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play.” That is an overwhelming amount of young people. In recent years, there have been incidents such as the Columbine school shooting which have shown young people committing terrible acts of violence. In the case of the Columbine shooting, the teenagers who committed the shooting were both found to be avid players of a violent computer video game known as Doom (Ferguson, 26). This has raised lawmakers and concerned parents to begin opposing violence in video games. These people believe that video games (and violent video games in particular) can cause young people to become extremely desensitized to violence, and in turn cause them to commit acts of violence that they would not have committed otherwise. However, these people fail to realize that our youths have been exposed to violence far longer than modern media has been around. For example, Wired.com writer Michael Venables points out that many of our classic fairy tales deal with violent conditions. He reminds people that “Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves.” and “Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven.” People who oppose video games pose a major threat to the development of youth in our modern society, because video games can have many positive effects on young people.
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)
Playing video games is a very popular activity for today 's youth.These games play a huge part in a lot of people 's social lives.Violent video games have a negative effect on children by teaching the kids to associate violence with pleasure,changing their look towards violence as a natural and positive behavior,and increasing the likelihood of participating in aggressive and violent behaviors outside of a virtual environment.Some games, even connect to the internet which allows the children who play them to have discussions with others they don 't even know.While some games do provide a positive impact on children 's lives a majority of them do not and that majority emphasizes negative behavior and promote violence.
It is true that many of the popular games are violent, however there are also many popular games that are non-violent. Games such as Myst, Gran Turismo, The Sim collection, Pinball, Breakout, and Tetris are all popular games that contain little to no violence at all. Some people may question why there are so many violent games, and the answer is simple. Violence sells. People enjoy the action in violent games. The American audience craves violence and advertisers and producers create more violent games because it is apparent that Americans would rather play a violent game than something non-violent.
Over the past years, video games have been a way to escape reality for some people. Video games vary from fantasy, romance, and role playing games to violent games. However, vicious video games have been blamed for school shootings, growths in bullying, and violence concerning women. Various people argue that these games numb players to violence, recompense players for imitating violence, and educate children that violence is a suitable way to resolve conflicts.
These violent video games could be a contributing factor to this issue. If violence is what these youth see on a daily basis, why wouldn’t they start reenacting the violent behaviors they participate in while playing the games? Adolescents will begin to inflict harmful actions on others. Since all video games that promote violence seem to cause hurt and pain in the lives of many, banning them can prevent harmful situations from occurring. Another reason violent video games should be banned is because they have been linked to many crimes, especially school shootings.
Throughout history many things in general have been improved upon. Four major improvement areas are: warfare, medicine, education of society, and technology. All of these improvements have brought with them positive effects. Warfare has allowed oppressed people to rule themselves; medicine has saved countless lives with vaccines and treatment programs; education of societies has allowed people to make their dreams come true; and, advancements in technology have made the previous three possible. With these positive effects also come negative effects, which are seen on a grand scale. Advancement in warfare has caused numerous deaths, medicine has advanced to the point where ethical questions arise because of cloning and stem cell research, the education of society in addition with the advancement in technology have allowed these negative advancements to be achieved.