Do Violent Video Games Don 'T Influence Kids' Behavior

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.

The most extensive argument many have argued toward violent video games affecting one’s behavior can simply be described as that many shooters were fans of violent video games before committing the shootings. A common example people making this argument raise are the Columbine shooters, who were big fans of the video game Doom. While many believe that Doom’s excessive gore and violence led the two teens to perpetrate the mass shooting, that is not the case. What those who argue against video games fail to realize that those who commit these crimes had a history of other conditions. After many mass shootings, researchers often discovered in autopsies that the suspect had a long history of aggression or mental health problems that gaming was not responsible for. Patrick Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson, writers for US News, wrote

School massacres have become more prevalent in this last decade. As part of the police investigation that concludes the shooting, they look for a motive. The first thing that people are frequently told from the news media is that the suspect’s motive was from playing a violent video game, not that they have a mental illness that may have caused them to execute their mass murder. Sane players of video games grasp the fact that they are playing a video game. “Their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality prevents them from emulating video game violence in real life” (ProCon). Whereas people who have a mental

The story line behind some violent video games includes games in which players earn points by carjacking taxis, scoring drugs from cursing thugs, and mowing down pedestrians.(see http://www.feedmag.com/vgs/duncan.html>) Some cartoonish tag lines in some sadistic video games include : -- "As easy as killing babies with axes" and "More fun than killing your neighbour's cats". This kind of themes definitely influence the players, especially the younger ones, and inflict violent tendencies on them. It is no wonder, that this killing mania in violent games was seen to seep out into the actual world when a high school junior opened fire in his school cafetaria in Littleton, Colorado, killing two of his classmates. The gunman was reported to be an ardent fan of Quake and Doom, some rather violent video games. More proof of the relationship between video games and violence is revealed by a study which clearly reveals how this kind of entertainment affects our lives. Greater details of the history of how high school students turned gunmen in Columbine High School are given, which shows that the effect of video games in their lives was a major source of influence in doing what they did best.

Adam Lanza, 20 years old at the time of the shooting, had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. According to a report by Connecticut’s Office of Child Advocate Lanza was an individual with deteriorating mental health and a fascination with mass shootings. Before the shooting, Lanza had cut off all communication to reality, secluding himself to his room where he played hours of violent video games and obsessed over mass murders. During the police investigation, his computer was found to contain stories, movies, and video games all related to

In the late 90s, it seemed that school violence was on the rise as three separate devastating school shootings occurred over a three-year span. The most severe of the three due to the high death toll was the shooting at Columbine High School, also the one most associated with violent video game influence. The two assailant's levels of gaming expertise and their participation in online gaming was in question as motivation for their killing spree. It was this knowledge that sparked a media frenzy over who's to blame for the heinous acts being committed by these obviously troubled youths. However, other issues in these children's lives can contribute to a deeper explanation.

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.

Bushman, Brad. Do violent video games play a role in shootings? (18 September 2013). CNN

Rampage-style school shootings are rare and tragic events. Although measures of prevention have become more advanced, school shootings have increased in frequency over the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Here in the United States, they have become especially prevalent, with 63 shootings just this year (Acevedo). The aftermath of rampage shootings leaves gaping holes and questions in communities. People try to heal and seek closure at their own pace, but the biggest question most are left with is “why”? In Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine S. Newman seeks to answer this question. She lays out her research and methodology for studying rampage shootings and comes to the conclusion that shootings are not spontaneous, but rather the build up of psychological issues and negative sociological situations within a student’s community that causes them to seek to regain power over their own lives through a rampage shooting. The story Rampage builds out of the narratives of shooters and their victims along with national data and trends is important because it highlights the places that our societies fail in providing a safety net for deviant students and their peers.

A casual day turned into a tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. The Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 was “the second deadliest shooting in U.S history” where Adam Lanza went on a killing spree shooting 20 first graders and 6 adults; he even took his own life as well. There was no clear indication why Lanza committed this mass killing at the elementary school. Reports have said that video games influence is motive to the killings because “he was so enormously isolated” that he would shut “himself in the bedroom and play violent video games all day” (Smith). He would create videos depicting gunshot suicides and pictures of himself pointing guns at his own head like he had seen in videos games. The violent video games had deeply brainwashed his mind making Americans believe that violent video games are a factor in contributing violence in people.

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?

It is agreeable that there are some correlation between teenagers playing video games and how it affects the youth mentally. Heavy consumption of violence video games does indeed stimulate a change reaction in the brain waves, but there is no hard evidence stating that those changes causes teenagers to act aggressively and violently. On the contrary, it is a popular beliefs that violence video games does indeed causes teenagers to displayed unpleasant behaviors and actions because that is what they learned and observed from the games. Therefore, parents should limit and regulate the amount of time their teenagers are playing violence video games so that they can protect their children from negative behaviors.

In 2012, 77 people were killed by Anders Breivik, who admitted to using Modern Warfare 2 for training, an extremely graphic video game. Not only did this mass killer use a vulgar video game to train him for his killing spree,but youth in juvie for violence and murder also openly admitted to playing and obsessing over violent games, such as “Doom” and “The Evil Within.” Evan Ramsey, a highschool student in Alaska, told news reporters “I lost my touch with reality. You shoot a guy in ‘Doom’ and he gets back up.” He said in an interview with Fox News. “You often have to shoot him 8 or 9 times to make sure he’s dead.” Ramsey snuck into his school with a 12-gauge shotgun, where he killed a student followed by the principal, and soon after wounded

After the elementary school shooting of Sandy Hook in 2012 this issue of violent video games became a hot issue calling for a connection of violence to video games. However, the final investigative report suggested that he was more a fan of nonviolent games (Ferguson, 2015). Video game violence is an issue that continues to be studied due to the inability to come to a general conclusion on whether or not the games provoke violence in connection to mass shootings. With shootings occurring and receiving mass coverage the media and public often seek a person/item to place the blame on. After the tragic events that left people dead or injured one of the topics that emerged was that of video games affects/effects on the person.

People can play violent video games without becoming a violent person. Sure there are some kids who play and think that violence is the way to solve problems. There are some who believe that violence is never the answer. Everyone should learn how to play a game and not take it so seriously. Try to be like ones who will not encourage violence.