Do Video Games Cause Violence?

Do Video Games Cause Violence?

More than 97% of U.S kids, ages 12 to 17, play video games. These kids contribute to the $21.53 billion domestic video game industry. Which, more than half of the top 50 best selling video games contain violence.

Top 3 Violent Video Games:

Battlefield: Hardline 
Release: March 2015

Battlefield: Hardline's mainly focuses on crime, heist and policing elements instead of military warfare, like the previous games in the series. In this game,  players have access to various military-grade weapons and vehicles, while also being able to use police equipment. In this game, there are many different kinds of modes that involve crime, stealing, murdering and other influencing actions. 

Bloodborne 

Release: March 2015 

In Bloodborne, you follow the players character, The Hunter, through the fictional decrepit Gothic City of Yharnam, which had inhabitants that have been afflicted with an abnormal blood-borne disease. The Hunter's objective is to locate and terminate the source of the plague, and secape the nightmare to return to the 'real world', also know as the "Waking World". The gameplay is focused on weapons based combat and exploration. Here they learn to use different kinds of harmful weapons to kill things of the unknown. 

Dying Light 
Release: January 2015 

        Dying Light is an open-world first person survival horror game. The game revolves around an undercover agent named Kyle Cane who is sent to infiltrate a quarantine zone in a city called Harran. It's an enemy-infested city with a dynamic day and night cycle. At night, the enemies become more aggressive and more difficult to deal with. The gameplay is focused on weapons-based combat and parkour. This game is not only just a game, but also a horror movie that could become real. 





With these three video games being the top three gruesome, horrifying games, they're teaching kids from the ages of 10 to any one older to become violent to survive in the world the video game designers have created. Which could very easily be confused and mistaken in our world. 


Statistics: 


Playing violent video games caused more aggression, bullying and fighting.
60% of middle school boys and 40% of middle school girls who played at least one Mature- rated (M rated) game hit or beat up someone, compared with 39% of boys and 14% of girls who did not play M-rated games. A 2014 peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that habitual violent video game playing had a causal like with increased, long-term, aggressive behavior. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that children who play M- rated games are more likely to bully and cyberbully their peers, get into physical fights, be hostile, argue with teachers,and show aggression towards their peers though tout the school year

Simulating violence such as shooting guns and hand-to-hand combat in video games can cause real-life violent behavior. 

Video games often require players to simulate violent actions, such as stabbing, shooting, or dismembering some with and ax, sword, chainsaw or other weapons. Game controllers are so sophisticated and the games are so realistic that simulation the violent act enhances the learning of those violent behaviors. A 2015 peer review study found "compelling evidence that the use of realistic controllers can have a significant effect on the level of  aggression." 2 teenagers in Tennessee who shot at passing cars and killed one driver told police they got the idea from playing Grand Theft Auto III. Bruce Batholow, professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, spoke about the effects of simulation violence: "More than any other media, these violent games encourage active participation in violence. From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior. Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence." A September 2014 peer-reviewed study found that first person shooter games trained players to have better accuracy in shooting a gun outside the game, and made them more likely to aim for the head.

Many perpetrators of mass shootings played violent video games. 
The teenage shooters in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre of 13 students, played violent combat games. Many mass shootings have been carried out by avid video games players: James Holmes in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting in 2012, Jared Lee Loughner in the Arizona shooting that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others (2011), and Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway (2011) and admitted to using the game Modern Warfare 2 for training. An FBI school shooter treat assessment stated that a students who makes threats of violence should be considered more credible if he or she aslo spends "Inordinate amounts of time playing video games with violent themes."

 Now, you may say "Violent video game players know the difference between virtual violence in the contest of a game and appropriate behavior in the real world."
Do they? Do they really? Kids at the age of 10 play violent video games all the time. How does a kid know that if someone makes him/her angry that it's okay to hit, stab, beat up or even shot the bully? It's okay to do such things in a game, why not in the real world? If that's all they know, to hurt someone because they are bullying them, then that's what their going to do to fix the problem. A solution for this problem would be to be more careful with the sale of violent video games. There is a different kinds of ratings for movies but how many kids and parents really follow that rule? I believe that, just like movies, you have to be a certain age to buy video games. To find a way to monitor games and who their buyers on. But for this, the company of the video games need to try harder on such a solution. Instead of making it all about the money, make it about taking care of the buyers of the games they make.

Just remember, 90% of pedestrians and 67% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior among children.