The Causes Of Video Games Cause Violence

Case Martin

Essay 6 Video games have taken the blame for influencing people to act violently, supposedly recreating acts in video games in real life. Since the late seventies video games have been said to cause violence. In 1979 the game Death Race sparked the first controversy of violence in video games. Soon after the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999 the controversy sparked once again. Many people linked the act of the two shooters playing of the violent games Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (both massively popular games of their time). After the massacre, over 170 newspaper articles focused on the idea that video games were to blame tragedy. These articled not only linked the video games to the act, but directly blamed them for

16, 2007, a highly anti-game protester Jack Thompson linked the shooting to the PC game Counter-Strike. This trend continues later as Mitt Romney as well as Doctor Phil supported Thompson that video games were to blame. It was later revealed that the shooter did not play video games, and these allegations were entirely wrong. This is clear evidence that the idea of video games causing violence is a present idea in our society, especially among high school and college aged individuals committing acts of violence. Video games are often thought to cause these acts of violence when underage or young people are involved because those age groups are seen as a time of development, when individuals still have the ability to be influenced, especially by media. Interesting enough even with all the allegations of video games being linked to acts of violence among children and young adults, “since 1995 Juvenile murders has gone down over 71% and the arrest rate for juvenile crime has dropped 49%.” ("Juvenile Arrest Rate Trends") The idea that video games cause violence should be brought into question because there is enough evidence against it to raise a

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