Preview

Do Video Game Kill

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
567 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Do Video Game Kill
“Do Video Games Kill?”

Since the released of a video game called Doom in 1993, certainly one of the most popular first-games shooters games. It is like a double-edged sword, because it does not help video gaming grow into a multibillion dollar industry, but is would teach kids how to kill. In “Do Video Games Kill?” sociology professor Karen Sternheimer talked about that the “video game explanation” for kids violence has become more pervasive. In this article, the author talked about politicians and 199 newspaper articles think that the video games teach young people how to kill and are the culprit. They blame video games. However, the author dose not think the video games are negative products. Because she thinks that guns, poverty, families, and the organization of schools may also influence youth violence. When we want to understand why young people, particular in middle-class or otherwise stable environments, become homicidal, we need to look at what the games they play. “While all forms of media merit critical analysis, so do the supposedly ‘good’ neighborhoods and families that occasionally produce young killers”(244).

Politicians and other moral crusaders created a name for video game, called “contemporary folk devils”, because they seem to pose a threat to children. Newspaper articles proposed that the video games are constructing culpability, and they are the culprit. But in author’s mind, she does not think the video games are not only way to teach young children how to kill. This is the biggest problem with media-effects research that “Poverty, neighborhood instability, unemployment, and even family violence fall by the wayside in most of these studies. Ironically, even mental illness tends to be overlooked in this psychologically oriented research” (16). For instance, African-American young people are involved more than twice as often as white in the juvenile justice system. So the author thinks poor males of color be killers easier than

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the past 20 years society has fallen victim to mass murders perpetrated by children, even though overall crime is down. In order to better understand this; social scientists are conducting studies on whether violent video games contribute to this cycle of violence or are they just a tragic coincidence. In “violent Video Games: Dogma, Fear, and Pseudoscience” Christopher Ferguson argues that there is no significant contribution to video game violence and the up-tick in youth violence seen today. However, David Grossmann in “Trained to kill (children who kill)” argues that video game violence not only contributes, but also trains children how to…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Final for Wr 122

    • 1967 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Rampage, shootings, killing, murder, blood, and gore are all things that people think of when they hear the words, “Video Game.” Video games have quickly taken on the role of being harmful too kids. Could this be true? Crime rates have been on the rise for the last five decades, so we must ask do video games have anything to do with this? Are video games destroying our children? Every time a school shooting happens people look for something to blame. Furthermore, in the more recent decades people have been blaming the violence of video games, for in these games you have weapons that you often use to kill people or other things with. These games have been said to be extremely graphic and aggressive and have many parents worried. However, after reading many essay’s including, “Art Form for the Digital Age,” by Henry Jenkins, and “Do Video Games Kill?” by Karen Sternheimer, I changed the way that I viewed video games. Before reading these essay’s, I felt as if video games had no other purpose but just to be aggressive, but now I see that video games are not all bad, for they are also a form of art, and art is not to blame for children being violent. Therefore, video games do have other purposes and are not completely bad for kids.…

    • 1967 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Critique Paper

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages

    She leads us on this journey by introducing us to a video game called “Doom”, and how its effects left a major impression on adults in the early 1990’s (p. 204). “Doom” is a first person shooter game that allows a player to act as the “killer”. The player’s point of view, while playing, is reflective of the actual vision that a “killer” may have as they attack their victims. Sternheimer suggests that this game, through exposure to the media and other adults, has created a disturbance that has demonized the game and those who play it. She refers to these people as “Folk Devils” (p. 204). With this impression left on many Americans it has become the only explanation to why school shootings and juvenile violence occurs.…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    For years people have blamed violent video games for violent behavior problems with white youth. In fact, many journalist compared young school mass shooters to how often they play a certain video game. In Karen Sternheimer's "Do Video Games Kill?” She discusses one game in particular, which is the video game “Doom”. “Doom” was a shooting video game “...released in 1993...”(214) and many politicians brought up “Doom” while discussing mass school shooters at the time. However these…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mass shootings have risen to a high percentage in recent years in America; there have been more than two hundred mass shootings in the United States since the year 2006. Some of these shooters have certain similarities with each other such as being introduced to certain types of violent video games. Many of these games are believed to have certain negative effects on children who play these games; this issue has been around for over a decade on whether or not these games are too violent for younger audiences. Parents have become concerned with the games that are being manufactured today, and believe these games may lead to criminal behavior for children who play violent games. However, we do not have enough proven evidence that violent media…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Compare and Contrast

    • 284 Words
    • 1 Page

    All boys want them. Destiny, Minecraft, and Call of Duty are just a few of those real-life violence video games that are the top of all boy’s Christmas lists. But are these games that young people should be playing? One major value conveyed through their toys is violence. An incident of a negative outcome from a game came from the Columbine High shootings in 1999. Two boys decided to go one a shooting rampage one morning. Would it be a coincidence that the history of these boys is that the spent weekends playing the shoot-em-up game called Doom. The video game had a version of two killers dressed in trench coats going around and killing, just like the way the two boys did in Columbine. Exposing boys early to these types of games can seriously affect their behavior. The top toys on the market convey that violence and shooting at people are a fun and entertaining thing to do.…

    • 284 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thousands of teens play violent video games. It is a very large industry in the United States. In 2008, over $11.7 billion was spent on video games and 10 of the top 20 bestselling video games in America involved violence. These violent video games are being blamed for bullying, violence towards women, and school shootings. The games teach children that it is acceptable to solve problems with violence. Violent video games are a large contributor to youth violence.…

    • 376 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Buckley, K. E. (2007). Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.…

    • 2802 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Video Games Cause Violence

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Video games have always been a great landmark in the history of the human race and how great and advanced they’ve become since their creation. Video games also have their own timeline and certain points in time in which major controversy has arisen. Newscasters have made full reports on how video games are the major contributor to thoughts and actions of violence in the minds of all who have purchased them, either being adults and all the way down to children of all ages. Even though newscasters and reporters may be seen as respected and credible sources this topic has always pinned video games as the culprit but they were never the ones to blame.…

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Looking at the history of shootings in the primary and elementary schools in the United States, one is confronted with some brutal realities. Some of the examples include West Paducah (Kentucky) in December 1997, Jonesboro (Arkansas) in March 1998, Springfield (Oregon) in May 1998, and Littleton (Colorado) in April 1999. All these incidents have one thing in common. School aged children who were also avid video game players, were at the center of those incidents. More recent violent crime at school which we can link video games, includes a shooting at Santee (California) in March 2001, a violent crime at Oakland (California) in January 2003, five homicides in Long Prairie and Minneapolis (Minnesota) in May 2003, beating at Medina (Ohio) in November 2002. These are some noticeable violent events recorded in United States’ history, but the question is that United State is not the only country in which school going children are getting involved in such crimes. School shootings are not new phenomenon and incidents of shooting were also noted in Germany and Japan.…

    • 1087 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Video games have become a part of culture in America and all around the world. Video games are extremely popular, connecting people through the internet allowing them to interact with one another through cyber-portal for entertainment, with varying genres of games from card games, first person shooter’s, racing or even 3D strategy games. These games connect millions people around the world, gamers spending countless hours glued to screens looking at bunch of pixels. These games are evolving every year, as technology gets better so do the games, with more realistic graphics, sound effects and scenarios. So with this, the violent games are also becoming more realistic, violent and aggressive. Many of violent war games being released today have age restrictions on them, R16 or R18 warning people of the violent content the game has, and however this does not underage people getting their hands on them. Are these prolonged hours spent playing these games damaging these people’s mind or violent games have nothing to do with making people violent? Many studies have taken place to look into whether or not these games are causing aggression, but none of these studied developed well-validated measures of youth violence caused by games. To investigate this important controversy and proof that violent video games cause aggressive behavior needs to be done more research.…

    • 1632 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Video Game Violence Essay

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Often, games, such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, provide an environment in which the individual must survive crime and other dangerous aspects of life in an urban warfare environment. These spatial environments provide a context in which murder and mayhem may be “experimentally” used to provide the player with a context of reality in terms of gun usage. In many cases, the ‘educational” platforms for video gaming are an extension of the violent film industry’s promotion of violence in the projection of re-enacting violence for an observer/audience:…

    • 1516 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Video Game Violence

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages

    97% of 12-17 year olds in the US played video games in 2008. Due to recent school shootings, and increased bullying, communities are wondering if violent video games cause actual violence. The issue was brought up after the school shooting of Columbine High School. Investigators learned that the two students played many violent video games including Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. However this was to some was a one-time occurrence. Video games are being used as something to blame on for the shooting instead of more logical reasons. Even though Video games are often connected to violence, playing video games doesn 't cause violence because the correlation between violent video games and violent behavior has not been confirmed, video games have been used as a channel for violent behavior, and that the fact parent need to teach them the difference between their imagination and real life.…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Video Games and Violence

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “What worries many experts is that video-game violence is abnormally stimulating, arrives with the apparent sanction of parents and society, and appears on the same TV screen as the evening news, this blurring the distinction between play slaughter and real life carnage.”(Curt, Washington Post,1990,p.1)…

    • 559 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Video Game Violence

    • 877 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Recently in America, there has been an explosion of anti-gun sentiment due to recent shootings, however no one has looked at the cause. What conditions a human being to preform these horrendous acts? Well, according to a myriad of parents, it’s video games. The claim is video games are actually psychological conditioners that cause a child, or player of any age, to lash out and perform violent acts. The scope of this paper will be violent video games’ effect on aggressive behavior as to negate the “educational” video game argument and to avoid gun debate. There are three schools of thought on the subject: video games psychologically condition one to become desensitized, video games have little to no effect on the player, and that video games actually have a therapeutic effect on the player.…

    • 877 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays