Violent Video Games Do Not Cause Violence

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Do violent video games increase aggression in the people who play them? If so then video games could be responsible for much of the bad news we hear on television. Are video games responsible for school shootings? Do producers of video games need to tone down the violence? What will happen if video games become more and more violent and realistic? On the other hand, are video games to blame at all for the increase of violence in kids? When violence in video games started to increase, people started noticing an increase in the aggression of their children as well. This brought about the assumption that the violence in video games has a large impact on the way children behave. There is no correlation between violence in video games and aggression in the ones who play them. Many people have conducted studies to find a link in violence in video games and violence in the players. These studies started when video games first became popular. All of the studies I have read about were either inconclusive or inaccurate, or they showed positive effects that could even outweigh the negative possibilities. A major issue people see when discussing this topic is that children who play video games often warp their sense of reality. The kids think that if they shoot a person in a game and nothing really happens then nothing will really happen if they shoot a person in real life. When video games first became popular, people may not have seen this as much of a problem because games were not very realistic. With the advancement of technology, however, video games are becoming more and more realistic. If video games become more realistic, children will forget what is real and what is simulated; a child seeing somebody violently murder another human being in a video game will have the same effects as seeing somebody murder another human being in real life. Witnessing these brutal acts of violence either will traumatize or desensitize them to violence. However, this is contradictory to the “Play is labile” theory (Schroeder 4), which will be discussed, in further detail. Randy Schroeder cites from Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture four characteristics of video game play. These four characteristics are “1. Play is for itself. It serves no external goal. 2. Play exists outside the scope of ordinary ... ... middle of paper ... ...ould change. The real causes of aggressive behavior, such as alcoholism, drugs, and other problems at home, would still be there and maybe after that people would see that aggression would be on the rise without video games. Works Cited Schlafly, Phyllis. “Not a Million Moms, Just Multi-Million Dollar Media.” Online posting. 24 May 2012 Eagle Forum. Web 14 March 2015 . Dorman, Steve M. “Video and Computer Games: Effect on Children and Implications for Health Education.” Journal of School Health 67:4 (1997): 133 - 38. Meehan, Tom. "Negative Effects of Video Games" 2004. Web 14 March 2015 http://www.svsu.edu/~rjlorenc/Videogameschild.htm Schroeder, Randy. “Playspace Invaders: Huizinga, Baudrillard, and Video Game Violence.” Journal of Popular Culture 30 (Winter 1996): 143 – 53. Scott, Derek. “The Effect of Video Games on Feelings of Aggression.” Journal of Psychology 129:2 (1995): 121 – 132. Villiani, Susan. “Impact of Media on Children and Adolescents: A 10-Year Review of the Research.” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 40:4 (2001)

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