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Alex Elkins

Brenna Sherrill

ENG 100

18 April 2016

Video Games: Do they make people more violent

From the time I was in 6th grade, and still to this day I have had a love and passion

for playing video games. From every single Call of Duty game ever created, all of the

Halo games, and just about any other game you could think of, I have played them. It

really gets me going when people say that video games make people more violent,

because from personal experience I dont believe that they do. Although they can make

you very angry at times, that anger does not carry out into your lives outside the video

game world. But because of my huge interest in video games, and I hate to do this but I

plan on explaining in detail the research on how video games do make people more

violent.

Although there are cases where people say that video games dont make people more

violent, there is also a lot more information on how they do make people more violent.

There are many sources that have published stories about this topic, most of them I found

on the WKU databases and some I just found looking on Google. Most of the sources I

found were journals from reporters for big news stations, and I found one that was written

by three people who majored in the psychology field.

The most popular case proving that violent video games make people more violent

are the many school shootings that have happened in past years. For exapmle, the Sandy

Hook shooting in 2012 or the 2011 shooting in Norway are 2 cases that people believe
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that violent video games are the cause of their aggression. In a recent event, a father

walked in on his 14 year old son killing his family, and the father had to kill his son in

self defense by bludgeoning him 52 times with a tire iron. The researcher of the case

testified that the teen had recently been exposed to aggression and violence, including in

the statement that the boy had been playing a violent video game called Mortal Kombat

which is a very gory fighting game.

Although many people assume that video games are the cause to the violence, most

of the time officials cannot prove that is the real reason why. In the case where the father

walked in on his son murdering his family, the researcher of the case had to sit on the

stand and hear from the judge that he failed to provide enough evidence to prove that this

homicide was caused by the son playing Mortal Kombat. Even the school shootings could

not provide enough evidence that the shooters aggression was caused by video games. It

is very hard for people to actually prove this argument about video games. I am a video

game fanatic and its hard for me to believe that my aggression I have is built up from me

playing video games for so long.

An article from CNN says that about 90 percent of kids ages 8 to 16 play video

games for about 13 hours a week, and in this article it says that playing violent video

games did cause violence in the kids around that age. It also says that kids in the U.S. and

Japan who reported playing violent video games for a good amount of time had more

aggression built up in them for months than their peers who had not been playing video

games.

There are two ways that researchers say spark the violent actions from video games.

The first is Imitation, which means children who watch violent video games think that
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video games portray what the real world is like and that makes them believe that acting

aggressively is the ok way to deal with the outside world. It is proven that if you are

exposed to violence daily that it effects your mind, it makes you think that doing the

things in these video games is ok, and it messes with you mentally and emotionally. Once

your mind is set that it is alright to partake in these violent acts, your mind constantly

wants to be doing something bad or you do not feel satisfied. I have recently been

watching Criminal Minds, and it amazes watching every episode. The people who do

these violent things are not human, they are sick, they will not stop until they are

completely satisfied with what they did.

Have you ever wondered why someone shot up the Virginia Tech campus? A man

shot dozens of people dead in cold blood, just because he had been playing a very popular

first person shooter game on PC called Counter Strike. I have personally played a lot of

counter strike and I am still in shock that they blamed this shooting on this game. The

shooter had to have many other things wrong with him to cause his actions, and although

its hard for me to believe, but in this case it is true, video games caused this man to

murder college students in cold blood.

In conclusion, as a gamer, I hate writing a paper in the perspective that video games

do cause violence, but it is true. Although there are very many cases proving that there is

not nearly enough evidence to prove that video games do cause violence, you have to

look at the bigger picture. All of the shootings that have happened in recent years,

excluding a few, were caused by men who exposed themselves to an excessive amount of

violence in video games, and I truly believe that is the cause of their actions.
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Works Cited

Benedetti, Winda. "Were Video Games to Blame for Massacre?" Msnbc.com. , 21 Apr. 2007. Web. 28

Apr. 2016

-This article by Benedetti provided me the information about the case where a father walked in

on his son murdering his family, and the father had to kill the son in self defense.

Casey, Michael. "Do Violent Video Games Lead to Criminal Behavior." CBS News, 17

Aug. 2015.

- Caseys entry talks about how people instantly believe that whenever there is a

mass shooting, violent video games are a key factor for the shooters rage. Later the story

states that there is not enough evidence to prove that video games contributed to the rage.

Ferguson, Christopher. "Is Video Game Violence Bad." 1 May 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2016

- This article provided information about the Virginia Tech shooting that happened a few years

ago.

Harding, Anne. "Violent Video Games Linked To Child Aggression." CNN. Cable News Network,

Web. 07 May 2016.

- In this article, Anne Harding provided me with statistics proving that video games do cause

violence in teens.

Markey, Patrick M., Charolette N. Markey, and Juliana E. French. "Violent Video Games and Real-

World Violence." EBSCO Host, 3 Feb. 2014.

- This group of writers, who just so happen to be majors in the Psychology field, wrote this article

about how we need to control the use of violence to help protect our society from harm.

Toppo, Greg. "How Violent Video Games Really Affect Kids." EBSCO Host, July-Aug. 2015.
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- Toppos article talks about how students from Universities in Germany conducted experiments

with video games to see the aftereffects of violent video games. They conducted experiments with a

Prosocial game, an agressive game, and a Neutral game.