Video Games and Violence

When I hear the words video games and violence in the same sentence, I automatically think that they are talking about video games causing violence among young teens and adults. I do believe that video games cause some sort of aggression and added violence in that age group, but not to a point of someone killing another person. My generation has grown up on the evolution of the video game. All we see nowadays on TV and video games is violence and killings. Some of the most popular video games and TV shows involve killings or trying to kill something or someone.

I believe that this is all based upon the modeling theory. The media has grabbed the young teens and adults' attention by making the video games extremely appealing to play. I mean, who else wouldn't want to take part in running down a street, hijacking cars and killing policemen? [I.e. Grand Theft Auto] A lot of these games are so attracting to this age group, because they might feel a sense of belonging and that they have some sort of control over the video game. They practice retention by constantly playing the games over and over again to reach perfection, or beating the game. The repeated different combination of ways to maneuver the people, or characters, in these video games is so they can reach perfection. By seeing other people play them, they get the appeal that they want to play them as well. Of course they have the physical capabilities to reproduce these acts if they pleased. A lot of young teens and adults play video games when they are bored or just have free time. I know a lot of people who can play video games for hours and hours upon end and don't act violent towards other people or other things (for no reason).

The article that I found states that video games do not correlate with violence; the gamers blame it on social problems, not acting out because of video games. When the American Academy of Pediatrics released a document stating that several studies have been done to prove that video games cause violence, scholars stated that there were a lot of flaws when it came to that study. The AAP claimed that it was based on 3,000 acts of media violence, when in reality it was only about 300. Also, the findings on this study involved outdated information based on youth crime between 1984 and 1994.

I think that this information is kind of wishy-washy. It stated that the Columbine, Co. School shooting killers had played