Summary: Do Violent Video Games Cause Desensitization

Many theories are speculated of what drove people to create such massacres and harm to innocent victims. One of the most popular is that violent video games have an influence on these attacks. However, Matt Peckham, in “Researcher Says Linking Video Games to Gun Violence is a ‘Classic Illusory Correlation’” explains there isn’t much evidence to prove that theory and researches haven’t found a reasonable link between the two. Actually, on the contrary video games seem to benefit a person mind rather than harm them according to Mary Flanagan, in her article “Don’t Demonize Video Games for Violence.” Video games don’t influence a person’s mind because there is a psychological explanation to these occurrences therefore violent video games has no contribution to violence incidents across the nation.

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.

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.

Violence in video games has been proved to raise the aggression on video gamers in the short and long term, whether it’s in their language, attitude or actions. Also video games not only cause this but they also decrease prosocial behavior and empathy (Anderson, 2010). Violent video games have been one of the main reasons why students decide to shoot everyone in an educational institution like the well known Columbine Massacre in 1999. “[They] liked to play Doom (a computer game) in the afternoons”,“No one can say for sure why...theories including...violent video games (Doom)” (Rosenberg, Unknown). As we can see very clearly violent video games

The main argument of this article is that video games have a direct link to short term and long term aggression. The author presents this argument by providing studies from peer reviewed articles that all conclude that video games do cause an increase of aggression. The main point of this article is to answer the question, “Do violent video games lead to aggression.” The article is about the effects of violent video games leading to aggression. The author uses recent examples, like the Sandy Hook and Washington Navy Yard shooting. In both of these examples, the author cites that both shooters had a history with playing violent video games. The author uses a study which selected individuals to play violent video games for a certain period of time. The study would then compare the results to a group who played non-violent video games. The study concluded that violent video games cause a direct link in aggression due to humans reenacting the actions the characters within the video games perform.

The article, “The Truth About Video Games and Gun Violence” by Erik Kain discusses how video games and gun violence correlates. The author opens up with someone by the name of Aaron Alexis who resorted to gun violence while playing video games that contained violence. There is a violent video game that scares parents and behavioral experts. There has been a debate on whether people who play video games later have violent behavior. Throughout the years, video games continue to show images portraying violence.

The paper discusses how violent video games affect a person's behavior and if they manifest violence and show aggression in the real world after playing such video games. I learned that not all people who are exposed to video game or media violence turn violent. I think it depends on the person if he wants to get influenced from the game, to mimic what the game shows. This is just like the next source, discussing about what kind of behavioural problems violent gaming brings about.

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

Americans have been blaming violent forms of entertainment since colonial times. From dime novels to music, to movies to television shows. The most recent medium are video games. Aided by crime-saturated news reports, a lot of people are convinced that video game violence transfers to real-life youth crimes like the school massacres. They think that violent video games make people violent, but that is not the case. Violent people play violent video games. Not everyone who plays video games are violent, but those who already are violent will play them as an outlet for their frustration and rage. If anything, video games keep violent people from going out and killing people in real life because they can vent in the virtual world.

On the other hand, some people, although they already know some of the positive aspects of video games, still believe that the negative will overcome the positive ones. The connection between violent games and real violence is also fairly intuitive. In playing the games, kids are likely to become desensitized to gory images, which could make them less disturbing and perhaps easier to deal with in real life. When video games aren't about violence, their capacity to teach can be a good thing. For patients suffering from arachnophobia, fear of flying, or post-traumatic stress disorder, therapists are beginning to use virtual realities as a desensitization tool. Though this presents an evidence that violent games do in fact increase violent thoughts, this data still cannot serve as an evidence because the test is conducted in a controlled environment, without considering other aspects that might result in the change in behavior.

(Procon.org) ¨Over 150 million Americans (71% of teens) play video games.¨ 71 mass shootings have occurred between 1982 and Aug. 2015. seven of them involved teens that are 18 years old or younger¨. (Procon.org) Over the years there have been many mass shootings and a very little amount of those include teens that are 18 and younger. The US Secret Service investigated over 30 incidents of focused school violence between 1974 and 2000. (Procon.org) School violence has been a issue over the years and 37 incidents have happened between 1974 and 2000. ¨A Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman had played shooter games back then. It directly resulted in President Obama requesting Congress to allocate $10 million for research on the effects of violent media.¨ (Video Games, Violence, and Crime) Some people that play violent video games can be just fine playing them and not doing anything that is regrettable. But there are some people out in this world who do something that is so far off the margin that they cause mass shootings. When people play violent video games they can get a little out of hand and cause shootings and some of those are teens. But most teens can realize and know the difference between the virtual violence world and the real

In their research of violent videogames and the effect on children, they have found that “the simplistic belief that exposure to media violence will lead directly to individual violence is clearly wrong.” (Kutner, Olsen, 2008) I am going to ask you to look deeper than this. I assert that although violent video games are thought to encourage real world violence, they actually help to prevent it.

According to Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia, desensitize is define as the diminished emotional responses to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposed to it. In other words, video games have always been an aspect of entertainment and humans have used video games as an outlet to escape the harsh reality of everyday life. The consequences of violent video games have been school shooting, bullying, violence among young children, and drugs and alcohol abuses.

Since several video games contain some sort of violent content, it has been hypothesized that gamers nowadays tend to be more aggressive. Gentile also states that “playing violent games increases aggressive behaviors, increases aggressive cognitions, [and] increases aggressive emotions.” This is an intense list of negative consequences, but what makes violent games instill such hostility? Many video games today include multiplayer in addition to classical single player modes. With real life opponents, gamers are much more competitive and inclined to demonstrate dominance over friends and real life opponents. Whereas facing a computer can be competitive, there may be a stronger feeling of satisfaction after defeating a nonvirtual enemy which could translate into real life aggression towards real people. Though correlation does not mean causation, the fear that violent video games may increase problematic antagonism is clearly not misplaced.