Opposition Towards Violence in Video Games

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Recommended: Violent video games affecting young people's behavior

According to Henry Jenkins, an American Media Scholar and professor at MIT, “young people in general are more likely to be gamers —90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play.” That is an overwhelming amount of young people. In recent years, there have been incidents such as the Columbine school shooting which have shown young people committing terrible acts of violence. In the case of the Columbine shooting, the teenagers who committed the shooting were both found to be avid players of a violent computer video game known as Doom (Ferguson, 26). This has raised lawmakers and concerned parents to begin opposing violence in video games. These people believe that video games (and violent video games in particular) can cause young people to become extremely desensitized to violence, and in turn cause them to commit acts of violence that they would not have committed otherwise. However, these people fail to realize that our youths have been exposed to violence far longer than modern media has been around. For example, Wired.com writer Michael Venables points out that many of our classic fairy tales deal with violent conditions. He reminds people that “Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves.” and “Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven.” People who oppose video games pose a major threat to the development of youth in our modern society, because video games can have many positive effects on young people.

Many people believe that, when playing violent video games, players who commit violent acts morally write them off as being “just a game” or “not real.” However, according to a study performed by T. Hartmann, E. Toz, and M. Brandon, who are professors in the department of communica...

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*** http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/09/jack-thompson-d/

*** http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/80969-Jack-Thompson-Releases-Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-Statement

*** http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime/violent-crime

*** http://www.pcworld.com/article/244084/modern_warfare_3_has_best_5day_sales_in_history_of_known_universe.html

*** http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0528_030528_videogames.html

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