Violence Linked to Video Games Rough Draft

Violence Linking to Video Games

Most believe that video games do not promote violence in people. They don’t know how it doesn’t register in peoples mind that you are your own controller. When children play video games they get mad and become angry when they lose, but the doesn’t get them so mad to want to commit a violent crime. Sure they have theories, but have they proven anything. Violent behaviors are done by you and you only. Did the video game make you go and commit a crime. According to David Bickham, a staff scientist at Center on Media and Child Health and Children’s Hospital in Boston, “However, there is a widely held misconception that unless children immediately imitate the violence they experience in a video game, they are unaffected by it.” Although some video games feature violent content, that does not mean that they incite violent behavior. Do video games actually incite violent behaviors in the real world? Well Christopher J. Ferguson thinks so because he says, “Children learn what video games teach, and often that lesson is doing violence.” Scientist say that children that have played violent video games are more aggressive than children that have not played. The more a child plays violent video games the more violent they will become , which increases the likelihood them to be violent. When children play video games they become physically and mentally agitated, beginning to think aggressively and become violent. The excessive rage alter with the age of the individuals because younger children do not know the difference between the game and real life occurrences. Mark and Keisha Hoerrner have a story to back up this theory of video games create violent actions, “Thomas isn’t a programmer or network engineer, though he’s considering that as a possibility for the future. He doesn’t have to worry about that now, though—he’s only 13 years old and has a long time to make up his mind about a career. For now, he’s content with the fact that in the next three hours, he’ll commit 147 felonies including aggravated assault, murder, attempted murder, robbery, arson, burglary, conspiracy, assault with a deadly weapon, drug trafficking, and auto theft while violating just about every section of the RICO Act, the nation’s anti-organized crime law. He’ll even be so brazen as to gun down bystanders and police officers and will personally beat someone to death with a golf club. All without ever leaving his room.”Does that tell you anything? On the other hand, Thomas did those actions on his own. The main point here is that you control yourself and children need to learn the difference between a game and reality. Now I do agree with the fact that the ESRB needs to be stricter with their ratings. If the ratings are stricter then parents might be less likely to buy the game for their child. Violent video games do not cause children to commit violent crimes when they are older. It just doesn’t make that much sense and researchers cannot prove it. The most recent incident at Virginia Tech in 2007 accused the killer learned and gained aggression from a video game. Scientist then were taking their theories from 20 minutes of studying a person. That is not enough time to study one persons behavioral antics. In 20 minutes someone kid can get angrier playing dodge ball, or basketball, so why video games? Critics chose video games because it is new to the scene, becoming popular, and easy targets. Ferguson states, “ Though the goal of the study is to explore the effect of violent video games on aggression, a shooter is sure to elicit more aggressive behavior than puzzle game.” This is like saying that you have an orange and I have a bazooka? That’s not fair! It would have been better to compare two action games, one with violence and one without. It is insane to blame a video game for people to act violent towards others. The world has dropped down 3 levels of common sense because we hold no one responsible for their actions, and look for easy ways to blame something else. John Sherry, of Michigan State University, found little support for the belief that playing violent games causes aggression. According to US Bureau of Justice Statistics, crime rates have dropped substantially(300,000 violent crimes) since video games have become extremely popular nowadays. Multiple critics believe it is ok to blame something else rather than society accepting personal responsibility. It is so bad that they have began suggesting the bible has violent passages and it increases aggression. That is just plain absurd, that is the worst excuse ever. When someone picks up a weapon and sets to end a life, it is not because your video game said too. It is because you as an individual made the choice to kill.