Video Games and Violence: Is There a Connection
Violent video games have been to blame for different crimes and today's youth acting violent but should it be the blame.
Violence is never the answer, except in a video game. People think that because our youth are being violent in a videogame that they will be more violent in real life. In actuality, there is no correlation between people playing violent video games and people being violent. To put it simply, Violent video games do not cause violence in our youth.
While video games do not cause violence to appear in our youth there have been studies that show that they can possibly increase violence. Some of this research has stated that “playing a violent video game for even 20 minutes led individuals to become less sensitive to real world violence” (Fournis 1). This is not the only research that has shown a link in aggressiveness and violent video games, there is also the meta-analysis by Anderson and Bushman which stated “videogames increased behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aggressiveness, and decreased prosocial conduct” (Fournis 1). While it is true that some research has proven this link it is also true that those researchers did not check the test subjects own aggressive patterns and their families aggressiveness before claiming that the video games made them aggressive. Not all research explain that violent video games are actually good for today’s youth, the research that includes all variables and more statistics show that violent video games are good.
There have been many different studies to prove if violent video games cause people to be violent. While there have been many different studies none of them have “been able to show that exposure to violent digital games is associated with an increase in criminality, aggressiveness, or violent behavior” (Fournis 2). The reason people believe that video games might cause these to go up is because in some of them, such as the Grand Theft Auto series, you perpetrate violent acts and criminality for fun. Also “research has failed to show a causal relationship between playing violent video games and perpetrating violent acts” (Toppo 1). Research has proven that video games are not to blame for an increase in violence but it is actually how the person lives normally and if they are shown violent acts they are more likely to be violent. This proves that different studies show that videogames do not make anyone more violent.
What actually has happened is that our youth has become less violent with violent video games being sold. Such as how Matthew Grizzard’s research explains that “violent video-game playing may actually lead to increased moral sensitivity” (Glynn 1). In a lot of video games you do things such as save a princess or play sports which leads people to be more likely to help people in need. There is also the fact that since “violent video game sales have skyrocketed, youth violence has plummeted to its lowest levels in 40 years” (Glynn 1). Through personal experience I know that video games do give people a complete escape from the real world and through that escape the teenagers that play these games bring out their anger and secret desires so they don’t have an urge to in the real world. So in actuality violent video games are making our youth less violent.
Violent video games make our youth less violent and they also make them less likely to commit a crime. Research shows that with a “1% increase in violent video game sales, crime incidents decreased by 0.03%” (Fournis 2). The violence in video games will give people the sensation of how it would be in real life and because of that they are less likely to actually commit the crime because they know how destructive it can be. Also research shows that “violent video gaming is associated with a decrease in criminality” (Fournis 2). The reason that it has a direct correlation is because the people that might actually commit the crime have a separate place where they can release their built up frustration and not take it out through crime. Proving once again that violent video games do not increase but decrease the amount of criminals in the world.
Violent video games are now a part of most of today’s youth’s lives, it is just another form of media we have. With a new form of media also comes the worried parents that have never had it and because of that people had to do research to see if these new video games are good for their children. And after all of the research was done it was found that the video games actually were good for their children. Some thing you can do is explain to the worried parents of how helpful video games can be when played by today’s youth. The only worry left for the parents was whether or not the video games made their children more likely to get in trouble or start trouble and research has shown that it actually has the opposite effect. For the simple explanation, violent video games did not cause their children to be more violent.