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Aggression to violent video games
Effect of video games on those who play them
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Global entertainment has been evolving technologically and the most recent advance was video games. Since video games came into our world culture, there has been a massive amount of change. They became the new “big thing” of modern day entertainment. Unfortunately the rise of video games has come with great amount of debates on whether or not games are actually good for you. The world media has been accusing video games as a main source of aggression but video games actually can help people around the world in a social, physical, and intellectual way. A huge controversy was about the incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. During December 2012, Adam Lanza, who was a video gamer, killed twenty children and six teachers after he shot his own mother. He killed himself shortly after the shooting ended. Authorities quickly used video games as a scapegoat to explain the mass killing. A police officer told the New York Daily news, “[This] was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer, and it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list.” (Lupica) While politics are blaming video games for the tragedies, video games help to remove aggression from the real world and letting it be released through a fictional experience. Dr. Kipling D. Williams PhD, a social psychological science teacher in Purdue University, mentioned that “children’s violent tendencies can be diverted towards violent video games rather than actually doing it in the real life.” (Wei) This shows one of the many benefits that people can get from games. When playing multiplayer video games, people can be helped socially and intellectually. For example, WOW or World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, MMO... ... middle of paper ... ...deo-games-speed-up-reaction-time/>. "Stop Blaming Video Games! - My Personal Argumentative Essay - Games Discussion - GameSpot." Stop Blaming Video Games! - My Personal Argumentative Essay - Games Discussion - GameSpot. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. . "Two More Politicians Claim Video Games Are The Real 'Problem'" Techdirt. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. . "Two More Politicians Claim Video Games Are The Real 'Problem'" Techdirt. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. . “Video Games are Good” Joseph Cho. Document. 10 Dec. 2013.
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.
Hanna, Patrick. “Players. Not Games, Cause video game violence.” New Zealand Herald. New Zealand Herald, 27 July 2010. Web. 24 October 2011.
Over the past few centuries there are many incidents where society has found the needs for a scapegoat, although not specifically pertaining to violence in video games; one can see the recent attempts to blame something or someone else for the heinous acts of violence that have occurred. According to Fergusion (2008) the media and politicians are mostly to blame for the...
“Video Games Get the Blame in Colorado Shooting Spree.” GamePolitics News. Mar. 2008. Web. April 06, 2014.
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.
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)
“On Tuesday, November 2, while the rest of the country was voting, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Schwarzenegger v. EMA, the landmark case in which the state of California is petitioning for the re-instatement of a California law banning the sale of deviant or morbid violent video games to minors” (Macris). This case is a current example of the opponents of video games trying to prove video games are a bad influence on children and teenagers. Violent video game opponents have always tried to disprove the positive effects of video games. They also have been known to make up and mislead with tales of terrible side effects. This essay will prove to the reader that many of these various statements against video games and their creators are false. Contrary to opposition arguments, video games actually present benefits to gamers by reducing stress, providing entertainment, and helping to develop motivation that could not otherwise be achieved through conventional means.
Video games have gotten a lot of negative attention in the media as a scapegoat for what is wrong with children. Are video games really as bad as they are made out to be? Alice Park, writer of “Little By Little, Violent Video Games Make Us More Aggressive” published on time.com, believes that video games are making people more aggressive. But within her article there are many flaws with her arguments; it makes a poor attempt to blame video games for events like the columbine shooting, racism, and hostile behavior. Park makes poor unsupported claims about the quantity and quality of games being played by children and the effects these games are having on them.
In recent years, technology has developed very rapidly. This has led to many arguably both positive and negative changes in our everyday lives. One such change was the increased accessibility of personal computers and gaming consoles as well as the introduction of numerous video games. Due to their entertainment value, these games gained popularity among children and teenagers. Although many concerns have been voiced related to playing video games, especially those that are violent, [e.g., increases in aggressive behavior in children (Anderson & Bushman, 2001)], this paper will argue that certain video games also have beneficial effects. They should thus be played by children, teenagers and adults alike albeit with caution.
By far the largest concern of technology today is video games. There have been so many experiments and studies to try and figure out if video games have a negative or positive effect on our children. A growing body of research is linking violent video game play to aggressive cognitive, attitudes and behaviors (D.A. Gentile, 2004). Video games can obviously be dangerous for our children causing aggression, bad performances in school and obesity. Although we cant blame all of these problems on the use of video game...
The second reason video games are an issue is that videogames have been linked to a variety of mental and physical ailments. The most common physical health problems tend to be arthritis from barely moving the fingers while using a keyboard or game controller, and a variety of eye problems due to constantly staring at the game screen. The most frequently occurring mental problems range from delusions to schizophrenia and becoming desensitized to violence. Keegan says that "repeated exposure to violent images can make people less sensitive to the effects of violence" (1). All of these ailments, both mental and physical, can and will occur in many people, but this statement only holds true if the player spends much of his or her free time playing video games. The essay “Violence and the Media: A Psychological Analysis,” shows how the number of hours spent watching a television program may be more influential than the nature of the program itself (Javier 4). While this statement refers ...
They get attached so easily with the video games that they don 't realize their ability to concentrate in the studies is diminishing day by day. According to By Rebecca Hagelin (2013) children who played violent video games are involved in active shootings at school and other public places. "The impact of playing violent video games has drawn heightened scrutiny since the massacre in Newtown, Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza, troubled by mental health issues and his parents ' divorce, reportedly also played violent video games daily, for hours on end" (Rebecca Hagelin, 2013, p. 5). According to Anderson and Bushman (2001) lack of parental oversight has become the primary issue on children grabbing their attention more towards violent video games than studying for their test. As the researchers analyze the statistics most of the parents are irresponsible towards their children who are willing to purchase video games and children being more careless and making a habit of playing violent video
First video games are not harmful to the public quite the contrary actually. Many video games encourage social behavior and team work whether that is the two player cooperative shooter game that two brothers play together working as a team inspiring positive feelings overriding the negative ones as stated in the study coauthored by David Ewoldsen. Or a family on game night all playing a game together and having a great time and bonding together because of the experience. And many games today don’t stop there at just play together and have fun. Many games promote teamwork skills through puzzles which can be solved together, or enemies that the players must work together to defeat. These positive social effects are not limited to one’s family but extend into online play, where one can converse and enjoy his time with others, creating entire
Schrader, P., and Michael McCreery. "The Acquisition Of Skill And Expertise In Massively Multiplayer Online Games." Educational Technology Research & Development 56.5/6 (2008): 557-574. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.
"Video game play may provide learning, health, social benefits." American Psychological Association. February 2014, Vol 45, No. 2