Do Violent Video Games Cause Behavior Problems: Essay

Do video games increase the level of violence in a person?

Do video games affect people’s behavior? Does the level of violence in a game determine the level of violence in a person? In this day and age, video games are extremely popular. It is considered rare that you would walk into a household with one or more children and not see a video game system, but can playing a video game have negative effects on you and your actions?

Surveyed among a number of peers, the results have shown that video games do not have a negative effect on people. Even the most gruesome games like “Call of Duty” and “Mortal Kombat” cannot be used as an excuse for negative behavior. These games include killing, blood, bone breaking, and more. At the end of the day, these are still just video games.

A lot of people tend to look at and blame video games for crimes committed in today’s society. Crimes such as robbery, grand theft, and even murder. They say that since most video games contain violence, which is true, and that so many people play them, that could be the cause of the crime today. In most video games, there is usually a good incentive for completing a task or mission. That task would most likely contain violence.

“Thursday, February 22nd, 2018, President Donald Trump said during a White House meeting that video games influence violence in young kids’ minds.” www.cnn.com/2016 “On June 27, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were covered under the first amendment and video game content could not be regulated by governments.” www.psychologytoday.com/us “Video game advocates argue that violent video games may provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and may reduce crime.” www.videogames.procon.org “There is no clear evidence to support the assumption that playing video games (violent) results in more lethal violence or other criminal behavior.” www.center4research.org “Nicolas Cruz, the 19-year-old accused of gunning down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, reportedly played video games for up to 15 hours a day. But that anecdote, as troubling as it might sound, is not scientific proof of Cruz’s propensity to commit acts of violence, according to many researchers.” www.nbcnews.com/news These biased statements made by multiple resources have stirred up an extremely important controversy in today’s society.

Now back to what CNN told us about what this most wonderful president of ours had to say. He said that video games do influence violence in young kids’ minds. He also stated that “The level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.” A lot of people, including me of course, would disagree with this statement. As I stated before, the man behind the horrific high school shooting in early 2018, Nicolas Cruz, played video games for an innumerable amount of time. Some days spend up to 15 hours in front of the television with a controller in hand. Yet, a survivor from that very shooting, Chris Grady, who also plays video games disagrees with the president. He said, “I grew up playing video games… first-person shooter games, and I would never, ever dream about taking the lives of my peers.” This is a survivor of the mass school shooting that some people are trying to blame video games the cause of. I completely agree with Grady. He and I feel the same way. In Germany, an 18-year-old gunman who killed 9 people in July 2016 was also a fan of playing first-person shooter games. This does not change my opinion simply because of the fact that so many people play video games.

www.videogames.procon.org provides a lot of statistics concerning video games. According to the site, 97% of U.S. kids ages 12-17 play video games. I, as well as numerous of my peers, are a part of this statistic. The video game industry is worth $21.53 billion. That is more than the net worth of Oprah, Jay-Z, P. Diddy, Dr. Dre, Tyler Perry, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, and LeBron James put together! This is part of the reason I am on the side that I am on. Just as many people there are in the world that commits a crime and play video games, there are just as many people who play video games and never committed a crime a day in their life. People do not buy games and throw them away when they get home, do they? The video game industry is rich. These games that are being sold are being played. More than half of the 50 top-selling video games contain violence. As I informed you earlier, video game advocates argue that violent video games may provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and may reduce crime. I agree with this statement also. The tremendous combined time gamers spent inside playing can be substituted for doing more productive activities like reading, writing, and even getting active outside. It can also be used for more negative activities like shooting, robbing, and raping. So instead of just looking at the positive things we could be doing instead of playing video games, consider the negative things we could be doing also. Maybe that will change your mind. Violent video games can be traced back to 1976 when a video game named “Death Race” was released. The objective of the game was to run over screaming “gremlins.” The problem was that the gremlins resembled stick-figure humans. After protestors dragged Death Race machines out of arcades into the parking lot and burned them, production of the game ceased. But, Death Race did not start crime. Protestors’ successful mission to stop the production of Death Race surely did not stop it. This raises the question: Was Death Race really to blame?

“On June 27, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were covered under the First Amendment and video game content could not be regulated by governments,” www.psychologytoday.com/us informs us. The U.S. supreme court, aka the highest court in the court system, said this. The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Part of the court ruling was that psychological research linking violent games and violence was “unpersuasive”. According to “Psychology Today”, the link between media violence and violent behavior in children has never been reliably demonstrated. In 1994, the Educational Software Rating Board (ESRB) was created. In the case of every video game, you can see in the bottom right corner on the front and the back the rating of the game given by the ESRB. There is also a little booklet inside the case that displays the ESRB rating. At the end of every commercial advertisement for a video game, you’ll hear something like “Rated E for everyone” or “Rated M for Mature”. The classifications for this rating system are as follows: “E for Everyone”, “E for everyone age 10+”, “T for Teen”, and the most profitable, “M for Mature (17+)”. There is also an extremely rare one named “A for Adults 18+)”, but it is unlikely that you would ever see any of these as they would just gravitate toward the more popular, “M for Mature” rating. In my opinion, the grading scale is appropriately accurate. “E for Everyone” games: “Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.” “E for Everyone 10+” games: “Content is generally suitable for ages 10 and up. May contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes.” “T for Teen” games: “Content is generally suitable for ages 13 and up. May contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling and/or infrequent use of strong language.” “M for Mature” games: “Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.” “A for Adults” games: “Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.” Some examples of games that coincide with these ratings are: “Madden NFL” and “NBA2k”, the 2 most popular sports games, are both rated “E for Everyone”. “NHL”, the go-to video game for hockey lovers, is rated “E for Everyone 10+”, probably because of the increased violence in hockey. Games like “Spider-Man” and “WWE” are rated “T for Teen”. But the top-selling games like “Grand Theft Auto” and “Call of Duty” are rated “M for Mature” Hats off to the ESRB for providing background info on games before we buy them. Even though most people, including parents, do not care about the rating of a game. Parents still buy these blood and gore games for their children so if video games were the problem, why would parents continue to fulfill their children’s wish lists every year with these games?

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“Studies have shown that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, behaviors and feelings,” per www.center4research.org “Aggressive behavior is measured by scientists in a number of ways; from hitting and pushing to how an individual reacts to playing a video game.” Even though, “Few studies have been completed on violent video game exposure and aggression in children under the age of 20.” In reality, there has probably been a high amount of studies completed, but since so many people play games, it seems like only a few. “There is no clear evidence to support the assumption that playing video games (violent) results in more lethal violence or other criminal behavior. The Task Force recommends that further research must be done using delinquency, violence, and criminal behavior as outcomes to determine whether or not violent video games are linked to violence.” A lot more research in my opinion. Blaming video games for crimes is like blaming hoodies for crimes. They are too common in the current time period.

Mitt Romney, the republican the wonderful Barack Obama handled back in 2012, once blamed The Virginia Tech and Columbine massacres on “pornography and violence” in music, movies, TV shows, and of course, video games. Let's ask a professional. “It’s hard to attribute video games to any kind of violence in society,” said Christopher Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University in Florida. “We’re not able to find any evidence to support this idea,” he continued. Ferguson is joined in that view by Whitney DeCamp, a professor of sociology at Western Michigan University, who says “The relationship between video games and violent behavior is insignificant and trivial.” The number of researchers who support the theory that there is no evidence of a link is growing. It is not a coincidence.

Theconversation.com has a detailed article composed by Ferguson himself, titled “It’s Time to End the Debate About Video Games and Violence.” He opens by saying, “In the wake of Valentine’s Day shooting at a Broward County, Florida high school, a familiar trope has reemerged: Often, when a young man is a shooter, people try to blame the tragedy on violent video games and other forms of media. Florida lawmaker Jared Moskowitz made the connection the day after the shooting, saying the gunman, ‘was prepared to pick off students like it’s a video game.” Ferguson then proceeds into the next paragraph by saying, “In January, after 2 students were killed and many others wounded by a 15-year-old shooter in Benton, Kentucky, the state’s governor criticized popular culture, telling reporters, ‘We can’t celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen.” Sounds like my point is getting proven wrong right? In paragraph 3 Ferguson shows us his genius thinking. “But, speaking as a researcher who has studied violent video games for 15 years,” he says, “I can state there is no evidence to support these claims that violent media and real-world violence are connected.” Criminologists who study mass shootings specifically refer to those sorts of connections as a “myth.” He closes his complete introduction by adding, “And in 2017, the media Psychology and Technology division of the American Psychological Association released a statement that I helped craft, suggesting reporters and policymakers cease linking mass shootings to violent media, given the lack of evidence for a link.” Ferguson’s name has appeared on multiple websites concerning this topic. I wouldn’t continue to doubt him.

“The latest in the long-standing debate over violent video games: They do cause players to become physically aggressive,” www.usatoday.com/story states its opinion. Yet another victim to this insane statement. “An international study looking at more than 17,000 adolescents, ages 9 to 19, from 2010 to 2017, found playing violent video games led to increased physical aggression over time. The analysis of 24 studies from countries including the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Japan found those who played violent games such as “Grand Theft Auto”, “Call of Duty”, and “Manhunt” were more likely to exhibit behavior such as being sent to the principal’s office for fighting or hitting a non-family member.” This means nothing. They provided no results. Just conclusions made by them. They studied 17,000 people. For all, we know it was probably no more than a couple hundred in their favor. “Although no single research project is definitive, our research aims to provide the most current and compelling responses to key criticism on this topic,” said Jay Hull, lead author of the study published Monday in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Based on our findings, we feel it is associated with subsequent increases in physical aggression.” This article was unconvincing in my opinion. As Hull stated, “No single research project is definitive.”

“Researchers at the University of York have found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent,” sciencedaily.com/releases joins the debate. “The dominant model of learning in games is built on the idea that exposing players to concepts, such as violence in a game, makes those concepts easier to use in ‘real life. This is known as ‘priming’, and is thought to lead to changes in behavior. Previous experiments on this effect, however, have so far provided mixed conclusions.” So ‘priming’ as it relates to this topic is the idea that portraying some concept makes reactions to related concepts in real life easier. Priming does not happen in video games. “In a series of experiments, with more than 3,000 participants, the team demonstrated that video game concepts do not ‘prime’ players to behave in certain ways and that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players.” Well, that was interesting. “Dr. David Zendle, from the University’s Department of Computer Science said: ‘The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players.”

www.nature.com/articles conducted its experiment concerning the topic. “Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3, or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent game to a group playing a non-violent game nor to a passive control group. Also, no effects were observed between baseline and post-test directly after the intervention period had ended. The present results thus provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective on the effects of violent video gaming.” Notice the enthralling word usage in the article. Instead of using words like “little” and “few”, they used the word “no”. The said, “No significant changes were observed” and “No effects were observed”. On the flip side to that, the article continues, “It has been suggested that the effects of studies focusing on consequences of short-term video gameplay are mainly the result of priming effects, meaning that exposure to violent video content increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts and affect when participants are in the immediate situation.” Now while this may be eye-opening, the text clearly states: “Consequences of short-term”. Short-term meaning we do not have to focus too hard on this statement. “We think that priming effects are interesting and worthwhile exploring, but our reading of the literature is that priming effects are short-lived (suggested to last for Last to state their opinion is www.learnliberty.org/blog. “As it turns out, Death Race would be the predecessor of a growing and an increasingly realistic class of video games famous for their violence. Upon seeing a copy of the (now classic) fighting game Mortal Kombat, senator Joe Lieberman announced his intention to introduce legislation that would prohibit the sale of such games to minors.” The creation of the ESRB would be coming soon. “Regulation never materialized, and the game industry would begin placing age recommendations on its products.” In other words, the ESRB was created. “Yes, many shooters play violent games extensively. However, the number of people who commit mass shootings is so small that this data point is uninformative.” That is on top of the fact that the number of people who already play video games is huge. “Moreover, the vast majority of people who regularly play violent video games will refrain from engaging in any real physical violence - let alone commit mass murder.”

In conclusion, video games are not to blame for the increase in violence today. I am not going to point the finger at any other forms of entertainment either. That includes video games, TV shows, movies, songs, social media, and all the other common trends in today’s society. We are humans. We know what is right and we know what is wrong. No matter what our favorite artist raps or sings in the studio, nor what our favorite actors and actresses portray in our favorite movies, we as humans know what decisions we are making when we are making them. No matter how real the gun looks on “Call of Duty”, we will forever be able to tell the difference between that one and the one in our hand. We know that if we pull the trigger in real life we will not be receiving points or positive rewards. I believe it is a psychological issue in a person that makes them do such acts as commit mass shootings and robberies and things of that sort. Yes, a lot of negative metaphorical referrals to video games have been made and will continue to be made, but as long as the game is selling, violence in video games will only popularize more. So what if this mass shooting in real life has certain similarities to the ones in video games? That does not mean that the video game is at a fault. I believe whether or not those criminals who did these horrific acts played or did not play violent video games, would have still happened. Video games do not increase the level of violence in a person.