“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! If you are just tuning in, we are getting reports of a tragic shooting at a small school earlier today. A gunman has stepped foot in an elementary school today, shooting and injuring dozens. It is unknown at this point how many have died thus far! Police currently have a suspect in custody, and we will bring you updates as this unfolds…” Switching between channels in the safety of our living rooms, we have unfortunately experienced this terrible news before or one similar. With such tragedies that have taken place and fear of violence growing, Scientists believe relationships develop between video game violence and aggression among young children up to young adults, yet so many other daily factors can be linked to the violence instead of video games. Studies performed by scientists, psychologists, and doctors worldwide to examine whether the violence in video games has a direct relationship to the outbreak of aggression in adolescents through young adulthood. Data was collected in Singapore over a three year period by interviewing the subjects of the study. Part of the study was asking questions to adolescents that played video games about how much time was spent on weekdays and weekends playing video games. More questions asked during the yearly interviews were about the gamer’s favorite game and was the game violent. The final questions each year where if they had feelings or thoughts about hitting someone and if it was
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.
Many people believe that violent video games play a big role in the violence we see in schools today. Gaming plays a large role in children’s lives and have begun to
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.
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.
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
According to Hollingdale and Greitemeyer (2014), Video games that are violent are identified as very popular games that are played by the consumers. There is a concern that violent video games may pose a public health risk due to the levels of aggression due to the effects of the video games. In a cross sectional studies it has been found that there is a positive correlations with real life and video game aggression. Also in longitudinal studies shows that playing violent video games constantly it can predict that there may be later aggression even after controlling for initial levels of aggression. Experimental studies have showed that playing the video game is a factor of an increase level of
According to Jeff Grabmeier, "‘Broad Consensus’ that Violent Media Increase Child Aggression," news.osu.edu, Oct. 6, 2014, 90% of pediatricians and 67% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior among children.
The number of school shootings by teenagers causes researchers great concern. Researchers wonder if there is a correlation between the increased numbers in young adolescents playing video games containing violence, and the increased numbers of teenage school shootings. Brad Bushman believes there is a correlation between “video game violence and violence” (2013, p. 376) To explore the correlation, one must first understand the definition of aggression. Eden and Eshet-Alkalai use Anderson and Bushman’s (2003) definition: “who define aggression as a behavior that is directed toward another person (either virtually or physically) in a purpose of causing harm” (2014, p. 451). According to Eden and Eshet-Alkalai: “in their study of aggression, Little, Henrich, Jones, and Hawley, (2003) claim that the most common types of aggression among children and adolescents are Extrovert Aggression, in which a child attacks another child, either physically or verbally, and Interpersonal Aggression, in which a child or group of children attempt to harm the relations between other children…” (2014, p. 451). Olson et al. claim that, “For studies to be useful for policy, aggression must be clearly defined and validly measured with a focus on practical (not just statistical) significance” (2009, p. 189). Once the definition of aggression is established, researchers can evaluate the risk factors, exposure to violence in video games, the length of the exposure, and other environmental factors, of
It seems that violent video games can not only turn an at-risk child up to a dial on their behaviors but also low-risk children into a school shooter (Mozes 5). Video games have also been put on the radar as to one of the root problems of minors committing violent acts. “If a child began playing violent video games at a young age, then he might think that violence in real life is the same as the game violence and that it doesn’t have a real impact on others” (Gilad 29). While kids play violent video games, they’re not only playing for fun. They are analyzing the which changes their behavior and actions due to thought process for example, “They start to expect people to behave more aggressively toward them, and they tend to see aggressive solutions as being more appropriate for solving problems”(Mozes 5).
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.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! If you are just tuning in, we are getting reports of a tragic shooting at a small school early today. A gunman has stepped foot in an elementary school today, shooting and injuring dozens. It is unknown at this point how many have died thus far! Police currently have a suspect in custody, and we will bring you updates as this unfolds…” Switching between channels in the safety of our living rooms, we have unfortunately experienced this terrible news before or one similar. With such tragedies that have taken place and fear of violence growing, Scientists believe relationships develop between video game violence as well as aggression among young children up to young adults, yet so many other teeming
There is much controversy on the subject of video games. One of the most controversial issues regarding video games is violence in video games, and the alleged connection with child behavior. There are many people, especially parents, who blame video games for their children’s violent and aggressive behavior. There are some who do not believe there is a connection with video games, and particular child behavioral issues. There are studies that prove one side, disprove one side, and it is very difficult to get accurate facts when a study is done on behavior. Every person is different, so it is hard to get reliable data.
“Recent contents analyses of video games show that many as 89% of games contain some violent contents” (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, Walsh 3). More than half of video games being sold around the world contain some form of violence. All of the violence involved in the video games being played by children is a pattern leading to aggression. Aggression can be caused by many things; however, violent video games are the main cause of aggression in young adults. “If a child began playing violent video games at a young age, then he might think that violence in real life is the same as the game violence and that it doesn’t have a real impact on others” (Gilad, Alto 1). Thinking that violence in the virtual world is the same as in the real world is the first step to showing aggression. Aggression in children caused by video games is the biggest effect parents and researchers worry about. Violent video games teach children that shooting and killing people are
Video games that allow players to be “violent” have been around for a longer time period than these newer occurring incidences of mass gun shootings. Mass shootings have become more rampant in approximately the last 20 years, but Pac-Man (a video game that involves the main character killing and eating ghosts, otherwise the main character dies) has been around for almost 40 years. Most people need a scapegoat to help them rationalize why gun violence occurs. I believe all of the bad charges against violent video games are just an instance of a moral panic. The “Encyclopedia of Social Deviance” says, “These panics occur when the reaction of the media… and the general public are out of proportion to the real and present danger a given threat poses to society.” (448). Scott Shackford, author of “Imaginary Guns Don’t Kill People”, explains that when people see instances of gun violence, they tend to blame violent video games. Video games cannot force people to shoot people. Violent video games do not contribute to gun violence; they are shunned so that people can have something to blame.