After World War II, the military discovered that firing rates were extremely low, and officials were actively trying to seek ways to increase firing among riflemen (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999). The true problem was that soldiers found it difficult to shoot down, and kill another human being. While they mechanically knew how to aim and shoot, taking another human life took its toll. The military then began using human-like simulations, to help dehumanize the enemy, and make it easier to shoot and kill. Video games are utilized to simulate enemies in deadly combat situations, and trains soldiers how to kill (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999). This in turn, dehumanizes and desensitizes soldiers, so they are more likely to fight. The military used violent …show more content…
Your palms start to sweat, and your heart begins to race. This is because playing violent video games actually elicits a physiological and intellectual response to violence. These responses are then sent out from our brains to the rest of our body. A study conducted with 257 college students, found that violent video game play resulted in a lower arousal of heart rate and skin response when viewing actual videos of physical assault (Brockmyer, 2015). Gamers actually become physically desensitized to violence as well. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), it was discovered that while performing violent acts in video games, the area of the brain responsible for emotion actually displayed reduced neural activity (Brockmyer, 2015). This discovery means that our brains aren’t utilizing emotion while playing violent video games, and thus increases our aggression and decreases our emotions. In a study conducted by Montag and colleagues, a variety of images were shown to individuals that ranged from pleasant, neutral, unpleasant and first person shooter games (Brockmyer, 2015). During an fMRI scan, it was discovered that individuals who played violent video games had a much higher activation of the frontal cortex, which is responsible for behavior control (Borckmyer, 2015). This suggests that gamers developed familiarization to violent stimuli because of frequent exposure, and this in turn resulted …show more content…
Michael Carneal, Wesley Schafer, Mitchell Johnson, Andrew Golden, Dylan Klebold, and Eric Harris were all responsible for murdering countless people and also guilty of playing violent video games (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999). Wesley Schafer was a South Carolina resident who loved playing point-and-shoot video games at the arcade, and one evening he and his friend decided to rob a convenient at gunpoint (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999). They entered the store and Schafer pointed a .38 caliber pistol at the clerk, and delivered a single lethal shot between the eyes. When police asked him why he did it, Schafer responded with “I don’t know; it was a mistake; it wasn’t supposed to happen” (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999). This is a key incident showing the reflexive nature violent video games have on people. Schafer never planned to kill the clerk, but because he was so desensitized to the action he pulled the
Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Adam Lanza, Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, and Seung-Hui Cho all have a few things in common, they are all school shooters that have killed and injured a combined total of 149 human beings and are or were believed to be avid violent video game players, who also committed suicide immediately after carrying out their attacks. To the public, school shooters seem to share a direct connection to playing violent video games and that playing them leads to violent behavior. Violent videogames have become a highlight in the media and national debate for this very reason but, there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a causative connection between participants of violent videogames manifesting violent behaviors. The media provides biased information that misleads citizens into believing that said link is well established and accepted. I argue that parents should make responsible and well informed decisions in regards to their child’s videogame activities in spite of the lack of scientific research.
The atrocities that swept through Europe during World War II brought with them the cultivation of a horrific contagion: dehumanization. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel exemplifies the spread of this disease by following Wiesel’s journey through the concentration camps of the 1940s. At the time, the stories may have seemed unimaginable, but today, historians cannot deny what happened during that dark time before liberation. Wiesel’s memoir can be used as evidence. Through their inevitable acceptance and continuation of the dehumanization displayed by the Nazis, prisoners of the WWII concentration camps were doomed to slow and painful deaths.
In today’s society, video games have played a huge part in the children and teen demographic. Revolutionizing the future, popular titles have implemented realistic values and experiences to players all around the world. As the quality of graphics improve and the plot thickens, so does the violence, gore, and bloodshed. Individuals who devote countless hours staring at the television screen trying to triumph the top high score and levels do not realize the amount damage and violent acts they are causing whether it is secluded in a virtual world or to their brains. Simulating unarmed fist fights, gun shootings, and war could lead to aggression and actual real-life violent conduct. Violent actions and behaviors in these titles could also desensitize
According to Valadez and Fergusion (2012), “The effects of violent video game exposure, both positive and negative, on various behaviors are still highly contested within academia and the general public” (p. 608). Violence in video games is often wrongfully perused as a topic of extreme criticism pertaining to an individual’s act of violence in today society. Examples of such would include the shooting that occurred in April 2007 at Virginia Technical College; where Jack Thompson and Philip McGraw asserted that violent video games were the ultimate cause of the tragic incident, but further investigation suggested that Seung-Hui Cho had never played any such games (Valadez & Fergusion, 2012). Since the early days of mankind, society has often enlisted the service of a scapegoat in the attempt to correct the unethical or immoral conduct of a few individuals; violence in video games is no exception to this type of social misconduct. Possibly, one may want to consider human nature and its unyielding desire to be competitively better than the next person; compared to an individuals need to be excessively violent regardless of visual representation of violence in the first place. Although many will argue the effect that violent video games have on the human psyche; the research is far too inconclusive for one to make an educated assessment of the provided information.
Many animals, and almost all mammals, play war games. Cubs, puppies, kittens and the like are known to wrestle, bite, chase and surprise. Through these examples, we see that even the most primitive subconscious aspects of the human psyche are satisfied in mock battle. On a more modern level, Nerf allows for participants to engage in combat without the physical aptitude required by the military, the consequences of death, or the moral significance of taking another life. In fact, I kill the same four people every weekend, and they kill me.
In 1998, the US software industry sold $6.3 billion worth of video games (see Unknown). Not bad for an industry that didn't exist 25 years ago! Yet despite its continued growth, all is not well in the video game industry. School shootings in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Conyers, Georgia and many other towns have shocked the nation (see Malcolm). Understandably, grieving parents and sympathetic citizens are searching for a cause for this "outbreak" of youth violence. It is natural to assume, "when children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." (see Maker)
Children today are exposed to more graphic violence in video games compared to any past generations. This is because the media finds that making a profit, surpasses the lives of the adolescents that play these games. However, over time two sets of views formed from the violence in video games. James D. Sauer, is a graduate of the School of Physiology. In his article, “Violent Video Games: The Effects of Narrative Context and Reward Structure on In-Game and Postgame Aggression,” Sauer, describes how adolescents gain forms of aggression and violence after playing certain games.
One study recently found that ?teens who play violent video games show increased activity in? emotional arousal and decreased responses in? self-control? (Study par. 1). The study was of 44 teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 17 years split playing two games, one a first person shooter, and one a car racing game. Those playing the shooter were reported to ?show more activation in the amygdala [in the brain], which is involved in emotional arousal, and less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain associated with control, focus, and concentration than the teens who played the nonviolent [racing] game? (Study par. 4). This is understandable, as the situations presented in the games vary vastly. While in one the concept is to win a race, not a matter of life or death, in the other it is to defend yourself and country, presented in situations...
In today’s society, highly addicting video games involving strong violence and language, explicit sexuality and crime often lead to inappropriate behaviors. Role playing games or RPGs allow us to step into a virtual world, cutting ourselves off from worldly distractions. Nowadays, the age range for people who play these extremely graphic games are anywhere from six to eighteen and are surprisingly hazardous to young children’s health. A study gave a group of players playing a violent video game the chance to blast a painful sound into their opponent's ear in order to get the upper advantage. They also gave another group playing non violent games, the same opportunity. The study showed that overall the gamers playing violent video games were more prone to inflict more pain on their enemies, unlike the other group who inflicted considerably less pain. Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D who did this study agrees, “violent video games desensitize players to violence, and makes them more violent in real life" (McGonigal). Young adults are exposed to these terrifying images, harming their mental health. In recent events, a young eight year old boy shot his grandmother after playing Grand Theft Auto. This game is the epitome of why young people should not be playing these games. It is comprised of murder, drug and alcohol abuse, criminal behavior, violence and general disrespect for women, and foul language. In summary, young people should not be playing these games in order to save their mental health. Furthermore, television contributes to desensitizing society with it’s ...
The first point that needs to be addressed is how video games are used for training purposes. Video games are used by the United States Army to train soldiers (Suellentrop). America’s Army helps the soldiers develop their fighting skills (Suellentrop). This video game also helps to teach soldiers how to learn to function as a team (Suellentrop). Along with the Army, video games train individuals how to respond in emergency situations (Issitt). Video games train people in many ways, even if it is unknown to many people how important they can be to society.
video games often warp their sense of reality. The kids think that if they shoot a person in a game and nothing really happens then nothing will really happen if they shoot a person in real life. When video games first became popular, people may not have seen this as much of a problem because games were not very realistic. With the advancement of technology, however, video games are becoming more and more realistic. If video games become more realistic, children will forget what is real and what is simulated; a child seeing somebody violently murder another human being in a video game will have the same effects as seeing somebody murder another human being in real life. Witnessing these brutal acts of violence either will traumatize or desensitize them to violence. However, this is contradictory to the “Play is labile” theory (Schroeder 4), which will be discussed, in further detail.
Ferguson, 2014 -. There are those who believe that playing video games that are violent causes a reduction in brain response to real life violence. This is because the violent game affects a part of the brain hypothesized to cause desensitization. It is then thought that this “desensitization” to violence predicts that those who play these games will become violent themselves later. (Bartholow, Bushman, Sestir, 2006)
The more kills, wounds, hit & runs or attacks the player accomplishes in the game the higher the score and more reward. This action is consistent in most games with a high violent content. Research studies have shown that the exposure of violence in video games does not “turn off” because the game is turned off, but rather the violent behavior displayed in the video game then reenacts and manifests itself in the behavior of the child (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Ballad & West, 1996; Bushman & Anderson, 2002). In study presented by Professor Jeanne Funk in 2004 review 150 fourth and fifth graders and how violent video games lowered the amounts of empathy, a person’s ability to understand another’s feelings, in the player.
Violent video games help the players in their way of thinking. In many researches these games can be used to train soldiers and surgeons because they train the brain to make quick decisions, also they help with managing resources that are limited and deciding the best use of these resources, like in shooting games the player must coordinate brain’s interpretation and reaction with the movement in his hands and fingertips, which requires a great deal of eye-hand coordination. However, violent video games change brain function in young men whereas there is plenty of evidence to prove that these games have a prolonged negative neurological effects, which may translate into behavioral changes over long periods of game play. For example, if a person listens to classical music all day, at some point, he will start to sing the melodies, the same way as if a person plays violent video game all day, he will start to believe that violence is normal. In addition, according to many researches those who play the violent video games h...
The question is, “Do violent video games influence children to act aggressively?” and “Can repetitive killing train a person to be violent himself?” Although the violence in these video games is fictional, research has proven the violence to lead to more aggressive behavior in children. Violent acts depicted in these games allow young children to believe that killing and fighting is acceptable and fun.