The debate about if violent video games having a negative influence on minors seems constantly discussed whether it is true or not. On January 15, 2013, the Video Games Rating Enforcement Act was introduced to require that all video games have a rating label on it. The law prevents those who are not of age to play it and making it illegal for mature rated games to be sold to them. This act was introduced after the Sandy Hook shooting, a shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary, on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooter, Adam Lanza was twenty years old; before going to the school he killed his mother then twenty-six people, then later himself. When the FBI did their investigation they found many violent games in the room …show more content…
The study includes a group of students playing first person shooting games and measuring their aggression after playing the game (Keim, 2013). According to Brad Bushman, a psychologist at Ohio State University “We did a comprehensive review of every experimental study, reviewing 381 effects from studies involving 130,000 people, and results show that playing violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and physiological arousal.” Although the results didn’t clarify if anger and aggression carries into their everyday life, imagine those who play on an everyday basis for hours at a time. Another physiologist Teena Willoughby, from Brook University did a study on 1,492 kids from ages ranging from 8 to 19. The study showed that the ones who played the violent games for a long time, their aggressive behavior increased (Etchells, 2013). To get more of a deeper understanding on if this theory is true the Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice examined 227 juvenile offenders in Pennsylvania. The investigation showed the level of video game exposer of the criminals. Those who frequently played violent games were associated with violent acts such as gang fighting, hitting their parent, or attacking another person (ISU, …show more content…
He was a 7th grader that attended Sparks Middle School in Nevada. He got bullied for wetting his pants and students would spill water on his pants teasing about not being able to hold his urine and having a speech problem. On October 21, 2013 Reyes took two handguns from his house, belonging to his parents and went to school, killed a teacher, wounded two students, then killed himself. Police found evidence of 69 different violent video games, 47 of them first-person shooter games such as Hit Man and Call of Duty; including an expression of angry notes. He was a troubled child with the stress of not living up to his parent’s expectations and was abused by his father. The investors also found web searches looking up “top 10 evil children” and the Columbine School Shooting as well (Glionna, 2014). In the police report the parents of Reyes said that they were aware of him playing violent video games but didn’t know the amount of time he spent doing it (Renzo Gazette-Journal, 2014). In result of getting bullied he looked for inspiration and guidance from violent video games to plan his
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.
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?
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.
Before the scholars had reached a conclusion, things seemed to get even worse. Several serious incidents of school violence happened in recent years. The perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and wounded 25 in two separate attacks before committing suicide (Nizza). Another school shooting also caught many eyes. On March 11, 2009, at a secondary school in Winnenden, southwestern Germany, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer—who had graduated from the school one year earlier—took his father's gun and shot at his schoolmates, which resulted in 16 deaths (Pidd). Right after these three young shooters above were both identified as avid video gamers, video games were regarded, by scholars and the public, as a significant factor in ...
Of course, some studies (for example, Anderson & Dill, 2000) appear to show that violent video games can be related to aggressive behavior. However, the confirmation is not reliable and this issue is a long way from settled. Henry Jenkins of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and many other experts have identified that there is a diminished rate of crimes done by adolescents which matches with the popularity of games that are detected as violent, such as, Death Race, Grand Theft Auto, Doom and Mortal Kombat. He presumes that young players can leave the emotional experiences of the video game behind when it is over. Anyway it is reported that there are instances of young people who carry out brutal law violations who likewise invest extraordinary amou...
Register Staff. “Sandy Hook Report: Lanza had a game called “School Shooting” on computer.” Web. Nov. 25, 2013. Feb. 11, 2015.
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.
All of the sources for this essay contain findings from the experiments that deal with violent video games’ effects on adolescents. The first article, Gabrielle Unsworth’s The effect of playing violent video games on adolescents: Should parents be quaking in their boots?, concurs the types of effects of violent video games on adolescents’ aggression, and that these participants show the different levels of angers during the experiment. The second and third articles, Krcmar’s Retaliatory aggression and the effects of point of view and blood in violent video games and Nicholas Carnagey’s The Effects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior, are related to each other since they both have similar results that violent video games increase adolescents’ aggressive cognitions. They are all related to each other except the fourth article, Marjut Wallenius’ Digital Game Playing and Direct and Indirect Aggression in Early Adolesce...
Video games have been available to consumers for the last 30 years. They are a unique form of entertainment, because they encourage players to become a part of the game's script. Today's sophisticated video games require players to pay constant attention to the game, rather than passively watching a movie. My working thesis is “ Although there are other factors that can lead to violent behaviors such as inner stress, playing violent video games are one of the main factors that can lead to violent behavior in teens relationships”. For the categorizing exercise, I brainstormed for the charting using some of the examples we hold in class. I found three main classifications to divide my evidence based on. Those categorizes are background of author, for and against, and type of evidence. The most important categorizes for my final paper is the background of the author, and for / against.
“Breaking news tonight at 11, three students dead, several wounded after manic depressed teen lashes out with a handgun…” Americans serve witness in recent decades to this scary yet familiar occurrence. The cause of this familiar scene is minors suffering from social disorders and aggression. The major focus of blame is the entertainment industry including television, movies, books, and recently video games. The state of California decided to address the concern of video game violence by passing a law banning minors from purchasing games that are considered “violent”. However, the law is unconstitutional and unnecessary.
Research has shown that immediately after playing a violent video game, kids can have aggressive thoughts, angry feelings and physiological effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. In addition, studies that survey large populations of kids on their game-playing habits and measure aggressive personality traits or self-reported aggressive acts — physical fights, arguments with teachers — often find an association between games and aggression.
This could potentially serve as an example to others about what would be considered normative behavior. In a study completed by Fling et al., they found that 4 to 7 year-old children exposed to a violent videogame were more aggressive than the baseline children or the children who were exposed to a non-violent video game. Chambers and Ascione (1987) found that third through eighth graders donated less to a donation box after observing an aggressive videogame as opposed to a prosocial videogame. In a self-report measure, 11 to 14 year old males who played videogames heavily had a lower frustration tolerance. Results by Dominick, Lin, and Lepper, younger children showed more aggression after playing violent videogames, however, some correlational studies have shown that more aggressive children are more drawn to violent videogames. In regards to self-esteem, lower self-esteem may be associated with more frequent videogame play and might increase a sense of mastery, however, is more likely to cause violent behavior. “Surgeon General C. Everett Kopp indicted videogames for being addictive and one of the three main causes of family violence,” (Fling et
While many different case studies have been done all over the world, scientists have yet to prove that there is a direct correlation between violent video games and child aggression. Since the start of this quarter, this has been an issue that I have been doing extensive research on. Despite looking into several scholarly sources, I was surprised to see that many of my findings were pretty consistent with one another. For the mort part, what I found through my research was a bunch of statistics from case studies and the interpretation of those statistics from renowned scientists. In many cases, statistics and studies showed slight indications that violent video games have an effect on c...
Violent video games have become more realistic every year. Children spend about 40 hours seated in front of a screen killing cartoon characters. It has been debated whether minors under the age of 18 should play violent video games that contain physical harm, killing, and sexual assault. In the contrary, people say video games increases the capacity of learning of children, but violent video games cause great damages. Although there are an increase learning skills playing video games, violent video games should be prohibited to minors because it changes an individual behavior, physical, and brain.
For example, regarding if video games cause aggressive behavior in children, in the opposite view think that violent video games should not be banned and sell it in everywhere because it is just a game that they will not be able to do in real life. However, David states "Although a link between video games and what the researchers define as “aggression” may exist, there is no causal link between violent games and violent criminal activity" (Willis 149). This mean that aggression does not have any relation with a criminal activity of an individual at all. In addition, there is another expert who believes there is no link between video games and people’s violent actions. Christopher, who is a professor assistant at Texas A&M University, insists that there is no correlation between aggression behavior and video games showing in his own meta-analysis that this theme was out of evidence and supporting that video games do not cause aggression behavior, that everything arises from the need to find a reason to blame after commit terrible acts of violence (Willis 175-179). However, while this view made some valid observations, this is not entirely base on facts. One of the best example is Andres Behring Breivik who decided to bomb a government structure in Norway, leaving eight people dead and several of them injured and affirming that a shooter game had helped him to do this massacre (Netzley 49). This shows that games are extremely damaging to society and violent video games cause violent actions. Another example is Jared Padgett a freshman student who killed a classmate and then suicide himself. Jared liked to play shooter games what left doubts about if this pastime can encourage children or adolescent to commit a violent act, and the idea that video games are violent in nature (Glynn