Video Games: The Real Cause of Mass School Shootings? Essay

In the year 2016, more than 10 million copies of Grand Theft Auto were sold. Grand Theft Auto, among other video games focus on illegal crimes. For example Grand Theft Auto, frequently makes references to drugs, murder, and robbery. Even though video games are much more violent than they were in the 1990’s, video games over the years have managed to make an impact on American culture. Some ask why violent video games are such a concern for America? Well according to Times Magazine,“The average U.S. gamer age 13 or older spent 6.3 hours a week playing video games during 2013.” With people becoming addicted to video games, others begin to worry if videogamers will start to blur the line between the virtual world and reality. In the book Columbine, the author David Cullen states media reporters, partially blamed video games for the Columbine Massacre. “When he was eleven, id Software released the video game Doom. Eric found the perfect virtual playground to explore his fantasies.” (Cullen,114) The shooters Dylan, and Eric before the Columbine Massacre fantasised about murder, and in the video games they played they were allowed to be killers. Although, media reporters stated that videogames, were a reason the Columbine Massacre occurred, David Cullen addresses that video games had nothing to do with the shooting. Although, video games had no effect on the Columbine Massacre, other shootings such as Sandy Hook has been linked to them. As video games grow in popularity and

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.

Gentile, Douglas A. et al (2004). The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors, and school performance. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from pdfcast.org: http://pdfcast.org/pdf/the-effects-of-violent-video-game-habits-on-adolescent-hostility-aggressive-behaviors-and-school-performance

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.

Video games have come a long way since the days of Pong. Advances in technology have allowed games to present state of the art graphics and surreal like qualities to its consumers; from four star simulated battle scenes to enhanced real live fire shoot outs. With all these innovations added to violent video games it attracted the visual needs of our teenage youth. Although video game violence has been blamed for high profile school shootings, video games and its creators should not be held accountable for these tragedies because there is not enough credible evidence to absolutely link video games to outburst of violence amongst juveniles.

These experimental studies find a strong relationship between playing violent video games and increasing in aggressive thoughts. Also, these studies revealed significant effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, cognition, and on prosocial behavior. This article provides evidence in my argument on how significant exposure to violent video game tends to increase the risk of developing aggressive behavior in real life. Furthermore, children exposed to violent material via the media potentially develop increased attitudes of hostility and show decreased emotional response to violent acts against others.

In today’s society there has been an ongoing debate regarding the effects of violent video games and the development of today’s youth. Many people believe that the violence in video games promotes aggression. According to Doctor Brad Bushman’s article, "Do Violent Video Games Increase Aggression?" he claims that violent video games leads to aggression because it is interactive process that teaches and rewards violent behavior. Yet others believe that this not the case. Gregg Toppo of the Scientific American, writes in his article, “Do Video Games Inspire Violent Behavior?” that video games are not a significant issue because teenagers know how differentiate between reality and fantasy. Because of the controversy surrounding this topic, I decided to research the question, “Does exposure to violent video games cause aggressive behavior among teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18?” Initially before performing any extensive research on this subject, I hypothesized that violent video games do cause aggressive behavior. I then proceeded to study different scholarly works that both supported and opposed my hypothesis. What I learned from those works eventually gave me a more complete understanding of the topic and allowed me to take a more educated stance.

On more than one occasion when a school shooting happens, one of the first things that is brought to the media’s attention is the type of violent video games the shooter may have played before the catastrophe took place. The idea that games with violence are the reason these incidents keep transpiring is a very popular one. Many people believe that exposure to these types of games cause children to shoot up their local schools, and it is not safe nor healthy for kids to play them. There are many events that can occur in a child’s life in order for them to blossom into a violent school shooter, and playing a violent video game is one of them. Children learn from their surroundings,

Video games have become a staple in the entertainment industry. Families coming from various backgrounds across the world own a video game system. Shooting games such as call of duty have become particularly popular amongst young teenagers. These types of games have led to a very popular debate. The question being do violent video games make children violent? Prosecutor Steven F. Gruel believes that they do cause children to become violent while defense attorney Patricia A. Millett argues that there is not enough evidence to prove this to be true.

Does the famous video game Pac Man influence its players to abuse the use of prescription pills? It may sound ridiculous, but that is how news media specializes in the alteration of false information. By arriving at conclusions without providing accurate research and facts to back it up, news media blames extreme video games for causing violence in our society. They ignore factors such as population, mental health, and home life as they quickly jump to conclusions that violence portrayed through media influences individuals to cause harm to others. The misrepresentation of violent entertainment by news media has successfully caused false judgments and opinions about violent video games.

Video games and violent movies are having adverse effects on the psychological development of young children. Although not all games and movies are violent, most of the modern video content focus on destruction and violence. Children who play violent games exhibit aggressive behavior than those who do not play or watch violent videos. Too much of violent videogames increases aggressive cognitive and behaviors and decreases prosocial behaviors (Rowan, 2013). These video games are more harmful to those children who already have aggressive behaviors. This trait is more common in boys than

Psychological Science journal has concluded “that violent video games increase aggressive behavior in children and young adults.” The review goes on to say “Analyses also reveal that exposure to violent video games increases

“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 have been around for years and have become increasingly more popular with today’s youth however, most people may think that video games are just games that children all over the world engage in but, what about violent video games? The amount of video games, especially violent games that children and teens are investing most of their free time has grown exponentially. This fact has led to many psychologists wondering whether or not violent video games are on the same wavelength as aggressive behavior. Furthermore, in 2010 a California law was calling for restrictions on video game sales to minors and psychologists Steven Gruel and Patricia Millett debated if violent video games had a correlation with aggression before the Supreme Court. In order to back up their evidence, their argument they used psychological and neuroscience research, both of which are prevalent in their field of psychology.