Columbine High School Violence

Whether violent media content leads to real-life violence is always debatable. And in recent years, school shootings have made video games a new focus of public concern and scientific research. In public opinion, video games cause more aggression in comparison to traditional violent media contents because video games have more features of interactivity, "due to the active engagement and participation of players" (Hummer and Wang et al. 137). But more and more reports tell us that video games are not the main cause of school shooting issues; rather it is the negligence of parents, schools, and communities.

In my most recent essay I wrote of the violence attributed to video games in light of various shootings and other tragedies that occurred in the past year or so. In this essay I argued that despite their violent content, video games are not completely to blame for acts of violence committed by children. Throughout this essay I tried to convince the reader by, first, establishing my own credibility with video games, then sharing my own experiences with violent games, and providing both empirical data and valuable insight from trusted sources.

A huge controversy in today’s society is violent video games and their behavioral effect on the children and adults who play them. Violent video games have been blamed for bullying, school shootings, and even violence towards women. Many have fought that violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence, and that they are teaching the youth that violence is an acceptable conflict-solving strategy. Other sources have stated otherwise. The 2004 Secret Service has stated that only one-eighth of attackers have exhibited interests in video games. Violent Video games do not cause violent behavior or behavior problems because it has not been proven that there is a link between violent video games and behavioral issues, playing video games provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and reduces violence in young children, and violent juvenile crime has actually gone down since the violent video game popularity has increased.

“According to data recently released by The NPD Group, in 2012, U.S. video game software sales reached $6.7 billion (174.8 million units) and computer game sales were $380 million (13.2 million units)” (Improving Economy). To many, the violent video game industry has turned all adolescents into mass murderers. However, they’re absolutely wrong. Very seldom do adolescents who play violent video games commit acts of violence, and the ones who do usually have a mental disorder. Instead of blaming the tragedies that occur on violent video games, the news media should explain to people that a large percentage of young males play violent video games, indicating that the two are uncorrelated. They should alternatively research other possible solutions to the crisis. In lieu of negatively affecting people’s lives, video games could potentially improve their lives!

As a hook in his article “When Life Imitates Video,” John Leo describes the Columbine High School massacre which took place near the city of Littleton, Colorado in 1999. Leo claims the actions taken by the teen shooters are due to the violent video games that* many young people play. The rest of his essay builds from this idea, arguing that violent video games desensitize players and encourages dangerous and delinquent behaviors in young children and teens. To effectively convince his target audience, those who have not yet had exposure to the idea of a connection between video games and behavior, of this idea, Leo utilizes an appeal to pathos and logos.

The Columbine High School Shooting allowed for us to see flaws within our police force. Throughout the Columbine shooting, there were many errors made by police. The police didn’t know the killers were dead, so they looked all throughout the school for bombs. They also feared that “the fallen bodies had been booby-trapped with explosives” (CITE), making them move slowly. These missed calculations impacted the lives of many. Dave Sanders, one of the teacher fatally injured, was in the science room bleeding out. The police knew this but didn’t arrive “until nearly 3 pm. When they arrived, they found more than fifty students with Sanders, who was barely clinging to life. A paramedic tried to stop his bleeding, but it was too late. Sanders died

People have been playing video games since the late 1970s, but it wasn't until 1999 that we began to question the consequences and influences associated with younger players. Karen Sternheimer's article "Do Video Games Kill" is about the controversial idea that video games are responsible for mass school shootings.

April 20th, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went to their school in Littleton, CO. They preceded to kill 12 and injure 21 students and faculty before killing themselves. Columbine shooting is infamous as one of the worst school shootings in US history. Harris and Klebold were known as outcasts and were ridiculed regularly. It has been said that they were out for revenge on the school for being mistreated (New York Daily). This extreme case is the cause of a broken psyche due to repeated blows from peers. “Harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents” (Statistics). Not every case will lead to a mass shooting, but is more plausible to lead to suicide. Teenagers are taking their own lives, because they can

As the level of violence in video games increases, so does the level of concern for those who play them. Some people are quick to blame school shootings on games just because the kid played a “violent” game. “The topic of videogames and violence can be compared to the chicken or the egg question, which came first, violent games or violent behavior”(Violence and Videogames). However most kids in mass shootings tend to have easy access to guns and are mentally unstable.

Tuesday April 20th 1999 seemed to be just a regular day. In Jefferson county Colorado Columbine high school was in session. At about 11:19 first lunch shift had just started. Then out of the blue a round of gun shots were fired, first out of many. Panic started to spread everywhere. News stations nationwide were on the scene. This soon to be massacre was now affecting people everywhere. Even a small town in Missouri was affected by this tragedy. One person especially, Randy Walton. At the time, he was at the hospital waiting for his second child to be born.” I remember watching this shooting on the news and thinking about what I was bringing my daughter into “ said Randy . At this time a lot of parents were worrying

The Movie “Bowling for Columbine” takes place in the United States of America where gun violence is a known problem which affects many people's lives every year. Michael Moore interviews student victims who were injured during the shooting, visiting the world's largest gun manufacturer allowed him to see that guns in america are easy to acquire. The local bank gives out free guns when opening an account with them, a short walk down the street in a barber shop made purchasing ammunition easily accessible.

Can violent video games truly be a cause of real violence in our adolescents? Can they really lead to such terrible tragedies and massacres like the one at Columbine high school? That is exactly what writer John Leo is suggesting in his essay, “When Life Imitates Video.” He starts us off here by pointing out the similarities between the actions taken during the Littleton massacre and the events of video games like the two shooters often played; and he criticizes the plethora of shooting games available today and how realistic they are. These games that are played by so many today, Leo warns, could “blur the boundary between fantasy and reality.”

I remember the Columbine shooting like it was yesterday. I think it is the first event that I experienced that made me realize that the world is a dangerous place. It was an event that open the nation's eyes to psychological issues that are faced by adolescents. It seems like every class psychology class I took after that found an opportunity discuss the event, and many liked to blame the prevalence of violence in entertainment. Sadly, it is also due to this event that there is so much literature available on the subject. The problem with this research, is that it seems to vary greatly on it's findings. In 2011 the supreme court ruled that the research was "unpersuasive" (Ferguson, 2013).

Video games. Americans has long been drawn to the idea that violent movies or video games can provoke actual delinquency or serious crime. In 1963, the Stanford psychologist, Albert Bandura, performed an experiment in which one group of preschoolers watched films and cartoons of adults beating “Bobo,” a clown doll. When the kids, who witnessed Bobo’s travails, were later left alone with the toy, they were more likely than other children, to abuse Bobo themselves. Bandura concluded that “social scripts” presented on screen can guide children’s behavior in real life. In the article “The Case for Violent Video Games” by Dana Goldstein, writes that such anxieties intensified after the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. It turned out that Eric

Technology is an important aspect of change in our world. As time goes on, we are introduced to more and more technology every year, which includes media such as video games. The increase of technology has also increased and improved the world including ways of communicating and distribution of information. More often used outlets of media are those used for entertainment purposes, like television, internet and video games. The ones who are most likely to engage in these media outlets are millennials and the most recent generation Z, because they have been introduced to these outlets from a young age. In fact, a study found that children spend around 9 hours a week playing video games (Polman, de Castro, & van Aken, 2008). It is evident that video games are progressively becoming more violent in nature, and with children spending as much time as they do playing video games, there are questions that must be asked, is the violent nature of video games effecting today’s youth? And if so in what ways?