Introduction
In the twenty-first century, video games have become an important part of many people's childhoods. It's been a part of approximately 64 million boys' and girl's childhoods in America, a study conducted in 2011 by the NPD Group found that 91% of children, play video games. For tens of millions of children and teens, video games have become a popular pastime, As shown in a McAfee study, children spend an average of 2.13 hours each day playing video games, As a result, parents may view video games as merely a way to waste time, causing their children to study less and as a result receive poor marks, hence, the raising concern because video games are only going to get more popular and have a wider reach among children as time goes on. In this essay, I will go over all the statistical data, as well as the opinions and beliefs of those who believe video games have an impact on children's behavior and mental health, as well as those who do not, and then I will discuss the potential positive and negative effects that video games might have on you in general. In addition, I will express my thoughts on the subject.
Violence
To begin, If there is a direct causal link between violence shown in video games and users becoming more violent in their daily lives, we would expect to see increases in violence spurred on by some of the most popular violent video games in history, and there are certainly some very early video games that fit this description.
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If we want to talk about realistic video game violence becoming popular in the mainstream, we'd have to go back to the early 1990s and games like Mortal Kombat and Wolfenstein 3D which were released in 1992 and 1993. Since then, we've seen plenty of other violent video games get bad press, such as the Grand Theft Auto series, Call of Duty series, battlefield, and so on, but for the most part, the availability of violent video games has remained relatively constant.
According to a graph that 'Medium'(The incomplete history of video game sales) shows how the gaming industry grew in terms of both the number of copies sold per year and the number of titles released per year, and according to the graph, the number of video games sold and released began to rise in the mid 1990s with the release of consoles such as the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, peaked in the 2000s, and then began to fall in the mid-2010s, then If video games are a direct cause of violent crimes committed by minors, then the increase in video game sales, which include violent video games, occurred between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s, then a youth crime statistic will show an increase in the number of crimes committed by people aged 12 to 17, but in a graph done by Statistia(U.S. - number of serious violent crimes by youth 1980-2018) shows that the number of crimes committed by people aged 12 to 17 peaked in the early 1990s and then dropped by 90% from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s Even though crimes aren't committed as frequently as they once were, the news and social media will portray it as the worst it's ever been, even Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States Of America stated that 'Video games am hearing more and more people saying that the level of violence in video games is really shaping people's thoughts' in a white house briefing on CNN the problem is less because the number of crime committed is increasing but mass shootings are becoming more bigger and more frequent in the media.
Mass Shooting
Let's start with a definition of a mass shooting. A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which at least four people are killed by a firearm. According to a study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health(Yes, Mass Shootings Are Occurring More Often), there were 1.6 mass shootings per year from 1982 to 2006, and from 2007 to 2019 it increased to 5.4 per year. On the other hand, according to a graph created by the FBI (The U.S. Murder Rate Is Up But Still Far Below Its 1980 Peak), 73 percent of all murders are committed with a firearm, which is an all-time high. So, rather than asking if video games affect every person who plays them, we should ask if they are affecting select individuals to become more violent and commit mass shootings.
First , we must consider the role of video games in the lives of young mass shooters. Let's start with the two shooters at Columbine. They were both fans of 'Doom,' and Adam Lanza, the person responsible for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a fan of 'Left for Dead,' 'Grand Theft Auto,' and 'Call of Duty,' according to the State of Connecticut Division of Criminal Justice(Report of the State's Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury on the Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 36 Yogananda Street, Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, p.25) While it is true that some mass shooters are video game fans, you cannot draw a causal link between violence and video games because I can think of a lot of mass shooters who aren't video game fans.
in-fact a report made in 2004 by the secret service(THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE)(p.22) only 12% of school shooters had any interest in video games. However, because the majority of school shootings are committed by young men, and 72% of men under the age of 30 play video games (Pew Research Center - 5 Facts About Americans And Video Games) You could make a case that it's a statistical coincidence, so it wouldn't surprise you if I told you that young men who do wrong have the same habits as young men who don't, but there is one piece of evidence that convinces me that video games do not cause violence.
the most powerful study on this topic comes from The Supreme Court The Supreme Court noted that 'Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects pro- duced by other media.' (Brown, Governor of California, ET AL. v. Entertainment Merchant Association ET AL, p.2) and ruled a law prohibiting the sale of certain video games to children is unlawful
The Real Cause
America is not unique in its video game industry growth, but it is clearly different in its gun violence. When compared to other countries with large video game industries, the United States ranks first in terms of money spent on video game development, followed by China, Japan, Korea, Italy, Germany, and Canada. (NewZoo - Top 10 CountriesMarkets by Game Revenues) According to GunPolicy(Global Impact of Gun Violence), China does not release gun statistics, whereas the rest of the list Japan and Korea have a score of 0.00, France has a score of 0.12, Italy has a score of 0.97, and Spain has a score of 0.58. Germany has 1.01, has 0.17, and the United States has 12.09. The United States has more gun deaths than all of them put together. These countries are unable to prevent gun violence, even though their gun deaths are significantly lower than in the United States, but why is it that video games are solely to blame for youth gun violence in the United States?
The Limitation of Research Against Video Games
There is a lot of research on the connection between video games and violence, and there are a few that show a link between video games and aggression. However, the issue is that the majority of news outlets will report on a study on violence resulting from video games, but they don't understand it or understand the limitations of the study, such as how can you test Violence? You can't give a minor a first-person shooter game and then give him a gun to act it out in real life. Signs of violence would be things like giving someone hot sauce as a level booster, for example, and its not a good indicator. I'm not saying these studies aren't valid, but comparing giving someone a hot sauce to killing someone is a huge leap. I'm okay with considering that video games have an increase in violence. Since the American Academy of Pediatrics (Virtual Violence) issued a statement condemning violent video games.
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