Counterargument Video Games Essay

Hundreds of studies have been done to determine whether violent video games will really make juveniles more violent. Randomized experiments were used in several studies to examine the short-term effect of violent video games (Anderson and Berkowitz et al. 90). In these studies, children were randomly assigned to play violent or nonviolent video games and then were observed when given an opportunity to be aggressive. The result was that children who played violent video games usually behaved aggressively.

A ponderous medium of media is video games in co-relation to violence. Video games encourage violent behavior in children as they are at a crucial stage of adaptation.

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.

Anderson, Craig A. (2003). An update on the effects of playing violent video games. Retrieved October 5, 2010 from http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/fa09/dis/02/extra/update_violence.pdf

Prolonged scenes of massive violence, graphic sexual content, and animated blood are examples of statements that the Entertainment Software Rating Board uses to depict the content in over fifty- five percent of the video games rated yearly. The debate of whether the aggressive nature of these video games influences youth violence in our country has been heatedly battled for decades. Since the mid 1980’s, it has been suggested that high profile cases of violence are due to an aggressor’s excessive video game use. However, much like a cold case the type of connection between video game use and youth violence remains without a definite answer. Most believe that video game use negatively influences child aggression acts in our country. Others firmly declare that video games provide a realm of opportunity for child development. Ultimately, it is impossible to say that video game use affects every child the same way. New studies suggest that video games do not affect every child that plays a game. Although violent video games are innocuous for the majority of adolescents between the ages of twelve and eighteen, the effects of these games are aggravated in those with pre- existing antisocial or depressive traits.

“Approximately 90 percent of kids in the U.S. play video games, and more than 90 percent of those games involve mature content that includes violence.”-(Time Health). The link between violent media and aggression in video games has also created a spawn of research studies that has gone back and forth on the issue of whether

For decades, the media has been accused of being a bad influence on the nation's children. Everyone has heard stories of little kids jumping off of their decks and hurting themselves after viewing the old black and white episodes of Superman. Years later, and there could possibly be a link between kids playing video games and those same kids later murdering their fellow classmates. Possible links such as this one continue to fuel the research supporting the idea that video game violence increases aggression in children.

Studies that claim a connection between video game violence and real-life violence are flawed research. These studies do not consider factors such as mental health, substance abuse, gang violence, or family medical history to prove their claims against video games. In video game experiments, children and teenagers are given minimal time like an hour to test their games, but the experiment does not completely represent how people play their games in real life. Researchers use artificial ways to conduct their research on the violent effects of playing video games, and the results fail to provide a

In this study, people meticulously studied other articles based on criteria they created for the research question, and conducted a trial themselves to come to a conclusion. “The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive affect and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and sensitivity to aggression.” They deemed that violent video game usage has a direct and constant relationship with all behavioral activities related to

Another issue with a lot of studies is the unreliability of some statistics. Studies finding a link between violence and video game playing have been known to be flawed or biased. Findings can also be misinterpreted or bent. This is precisely why the Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association did not really consider the studies. The psychological evidence provided was unpersuasive: “though psychological research is often used in the courtroom in issues relating to child safety, the lack of consistent findings connecting video games to violent behaviour in children helped sway the court against regulation” (Vitelli). The majority opinion stated that studies supporting violence in video games causing aggression have been rejected because they

Anderson, C. A., & Warburton, W. A. (2012). The impact of violent video games: An

Anderson to support his claim by showing that most blame of violent outbreaks in society are blamed on one single thing, like video games, but if you look at the studies there are some many different factors that affect the behavior of today’s society. The author then goes on to say “Most researchers in the field agree with Dr. Anderson evidence and findings,” which establishes an accepted respect of authority for his source. This gives the reader a feeling of comfort in knowing that these sources are scholarly and can be trusted. Another source used by the author explains a recent experiment by psychologists at Iowa State University have found that after a short usage of the fighting game “Mortal Kombat” that they indeed acted slightly more aggressive shortly following the experiment but ultimately couldn’t find any results in long term effects. Mr. Carey states “Many similar studies have found the same thing: A dose of violent gaming makes people act a little more rudely than they would otherwise, at least for a few minutes after playing, but little is found about what actually follows,” this gives more support to his claim by displaying that his claim is the generally accepted and agreed upon opinion of most scholars in this field of study. Throughout the article the author gives each of his source’s full detailed background to explain why they are creditable and trustworthy

Many people think video games can cause violence. Most of the people reading this would say yes, that video games do cause violence because a lot of times you see video games connect with violence on the news, but how often are video games the main reason that the act of violence someone caused happened. But what is video game violence and how do these scientists classify it? Most importantly how do you measure aggression?There have been 300 studies give or take between 2005 to 2013. That's on average 37.5 studies per year over eight years. Yet none has yielded a good answer on if video games cause violence or not.

There have been several scientific studies to determine if video games do in fact contribute to violence. One study was conducted by experimental psychologist in 2015 at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. Lead by Dr. Andy Przybykaski, the study included research to observe the behaviors of children during social gaming. Dr. Przybykaski also wanted to review the affects gaming had on education performance in school. One part of the study found that found that children who play

A major opposition to violence video games leading to aggression is that the research that was done is not a valid research. Henry Jenkins said “...most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds” (2). The studies are not inconclusive because in the studies that the researchers do they