Youths and Violent Video Games

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Since the rise of violent video games, a common topic of discussion has been that violent video games incite violence in young teens. Despite what these people may think, violent video games have many upsides as well as the whole idea of inciting violence may just not be true. Research has stated that among many things that violent games do help, they can help reduce the amount of youth violence, increase intellectual skills, provide an output for aggressive behavior, and help kids or even adults relax. With many groups of people trying to get violence in video games taken away, I believe that violent video games are what helps regulate emotions in young teens as well as helping improve thought processing and memory retention.
Research has found that linking violent video games to violent or aggressive behavior is unwarranted and unnecessary. It has been shown that there is yet to be any proof of this revelation being true, and even more proving it to be false. Statistics show that “sales of video games from 1995-2008 have more than quadrupled, while the arrest rate for juvenile murders fell 71.9% and the arrest rate for all juvenile violent crimes declined 49.3% in this same period.”(Akhaven) Another study done in 2005 states that “the US had 2,279 murders committed by teenagers compared to 73 in Japan while per capita video game sales were $5.20 in the US compared to $47 in Japan.”(Goldfein) A few people have went far enough to be able to say through their research that a lot of things said about violence in video games are linked to aggressive behavior is completely false. A duo of people have even stated that “a casual link between violent video games and violent behavior has not been proven.”(Dmitri) The same duo has also st...

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...search, Jan. 2008
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