Do violent video games increase aggression in the people who play them? If so
then video games could be responsible for much of the bad news we hear on television.
Are video games responsible for school shootings? Do producers of video games need to
tone down the violence? What will happen if video games become more and more violent
and realistic? On the other hand, are video games to blame at all for the increase of
violence in kids? When violence in video games started to increase, people started
noticing an increase in the aggression of their children as well. This brought about the assumption that the violence in video games has a large impact on the way children behave.
There is no correlation between violence in video games and aggression in the
ones who play them. Many people have conducted studies to find a link in violence in
video games and violence in the players. These studies started when video games first
became popular. All of the studies I have read about were either inconclusive or
inaccurate, or they showed positive effects that could even outweigh the negative
possibilities.
A major issue people see when discussing this topic is that children who play
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.
Randy Schroeder cites from Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens: A Study of the
Play Element in Culture four characteristics of video game play. These four
characteristics are “1. Play is for itself. It serves no external goal. 2. Play exists outside the scope of ordinary ...
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...ould change. The real causes of aggressive
behavior, such as alcoholism, drugs, and other problems at home, would still be there and
maybe after that people would see that aggression would be on the rise without video
games.
Works Cited
Schlafly, Phyllis. “Not a Million Moms, Just Multi-Million Dollar Media.” Online
posting. 24 May 2012 Eagle Forum. Web 14 March 2015
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Dorman, Steve M. “Video and Computer Games: Effect on Children and Implications for
Health Education.” Journal of School Health 67:4 (1997): 133 - 38.
Meehan, Tom. "Negative Effects of Video Games" 2004. Web 14 March 2015
http://www.svsu.edu/~rjlorenc/Videogameschild.htm
Schroeder, Randy. “Playspace Invaders: Huizinga, Baudrillard, and Video Game
Violence.” Journal of Popular Culture 30 (Winter 1996): 143 – 53.
Scott, Derek. “The Effect of Video Games on Feelings of Aggression.” Journal of
Psychology 129:2 (1995): 121 – 132.
Villiani, Susan. “Impact of Media on Children and Adolescents: A 10-Year Review of
the Research.” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 40:4 (2001)