Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression

wanting to say that i am a former player of video games but i don't play them anymore because i realize that they are terrible for you not to mention when i was playin them no one could bother me cause i was so addicted to them and i just never ever stoppped playing them, i always had a really bad attitude towards other people when i played them and even when i wasn't in the middle of a game i always had such a bad attitude no one can imagine just how bad it was. if anyone out there belives me then that right there tells you how bad video games truely are!!!!!!!

Any argument about violence in video games causing violent behavior in children is purely a faulty causality. There are many people (including myself) who play violent video games and have not had nor shown any violent tendencies in public or at home. One question I would like to know is: are violent games making kids violent, or are kids whom already show violent behavior drawn to violent video games? You want to research something? Research that.
In addition, there are also many other people who play violent games for sheer, mindless entertainment. There are others who would prefer to use violent video games as a way of expressing anger or releasing their frustration (like my brother for example).
And linking such a horrid event like Columbine to being caused by a video game is absolutely absurd and fallacious. Those two were "mentally unbalanced" before they went around shooting their classmates. There were also many other contributing factors, like bullying and such.
Understand that I am not saying that violent games are necessarily "good" for society, I am merely pointing out there is no cold hard evidence that suggests that violent games cause violent behavior and are harmful to society, no matter how many researches are conducted. I do not believe that 8 year-olds should go around playing games like Call of Duty, Halo, and Half-Life, but I highly doubt that playing such games will turn them into psychopathic serial killers.
Another truth about this topic however, is that all arguments and comments made about such a controversial topic are all biased in some way or another. For example, a mother of two young children will have a very different argument to present than mine; one of the reasons being she wouldn't want her children playing such games.
In short, any argument being made to directly link a violent game to causing younger kids in society to act violently is undeniably fallacious. I encourage the next person who makes an argument on this topic to look at both sides and try to be as unbiased as possible, and to avoid turning their case into a big fallacy.

ok i play a lot of video games like runescape.com halo 3 call of duty4 and stuff like that are parshally violent but yet i've never like got into a huge fight or punched someone in the face or freaked out into a tantrum and im like 12 so video games dont cause violence realy at all, if u dont believe me then u can try for yourself....!

So I have a theory, and it is just a theory, that the parents that will allow their children to be more "rambunctious" therefore leading to a more violent life style also allow their children to have more violent games. I know when I was growing up the game Rampage was too violent for me to be playing according to my mother and I am not a violent person at all. So those people who are more violent may have violent video games but that is not the reason for the violence.

I think that a person should be able to tell the difference between a game and thier real life. But there are people out there who play violent video games all day every day. You can become influenced by what you see and play, not really by doing massive drivebys but through how your attitude changes, I know I get so mad if I lose a game, even when I know I have other lives or I can just restart from the last saved point, and normally I get a lil crazy and flip out on any victim near me, maybe by yelling at them and throwing the controller across the room which I'm sure you all have done before. But whatever, the effects you get depend on the person, and for all you people out there who are going crazy mad over this article. Shut up, and take out your anger on the video games, because your being aggressive and proving this article true.

Maybe some i guess,but not all.Probably those games that has action scene,i agree that they should be filtered and have a rating in order to know the right game for a kids certain age.

I've been playing video games for six years now. I started with Mario Bros. and moved on to Mechassault a few Star Wars games and now I'm on the Halo series. In my expirence, the only link (notice that this isn't plural) between violent video games and violent people, is that violent people are DRAWN to violent video games. The people don't have to be openly violent to be considered violent (I consider myself to be violent even though I'm sixteen and have been in only two fist fights in my whole life. Which was in defense of a friend who was being throtled by a person who very RARELY played video games. Consider that when you think about violent video games and how they are "the cause of the 'Epidemic' of youth violence).
Think about it this way:
If you wanted to go out and kill someone, you wouldn't spend your time playing a video game trying to learn how to do it. You would get a gun, knife or even yout own car, and shoot stab or run-down the person you wanted to kill.
Almost all of my friends are avid gamers, and only one of them has ever been in serious trouble (he was cound holding a can of spraypaint in a public restroom that had just been tagged).
Video games are not a cause of violence and aggression. Being male, angery, fom a broken home, living in the hood, from an abusive background, intocication, and about twenty-seven other things are the causes of violence.
I don't deny that video games are at times questionable (simulating a murder, rape, hit and run) or that children (depending on age) should be regulated on what they have access to (a five year old has no buisness playing Gears of War of Grand Thieft Auto V).
Yes they can be addictive, but no more so than tabaco but most of you are fine with the sales of cigaretts and chewing tabaco. Video games are gust another medium of expression. Remember when Rock 'n' Roll came along? How about movies? Or when the gutenburgh press was invented? The social elite had a fit because the peasents could read books and afford to pay for them. Go even further back and you will fing the same objections when the (do NOT think that I'm comparing video games to the Bible) Bible was translated in from Latin to plain english.
Think about it.

It all boils down to the person not the game. If they can't differenciate the difference between fantasy and reality, their parents shouldn't be buying the games for them. Majority of gamers, like myself, started at an early age, and turned out into very civil adults. Yet nobody ever checks the kid bullying the child in question, its the one playing the video games thats getting bullied that is studied for violent behavior. I remember playing games like Splatterhouse, Mortal Kombat, Eternal Champions, and mutant league football back in the 90's when I was a child. And most of my aggression nowadays stems from work... I play the videogames as an outlet for my aggression. The largest age group of gamers now is 20-35, and you never hear about adults acting out because of violent, Mature rated, games. (that can only be purchased if you're 18 or older) Its these forms of "evidence" that minors are being affected that keep coming up, and it's always from someone who rarely experiences them. The argument about the columbine students is spun many times in favor of the topic. But there were other more obvious preventative signs about those two students that were looked over. Sorry for the rant.

...Hitler never played video games.

Most people who say games should be banned have never played one in their life. I believe that violent videogames only affect teenagers or children that already have an abusive and negative atmosphere at home. To act as a catalist, there has got to be a bad environment at home. I played grand theft auto when I was 7 years old thinking it was a racing game, and people as me all the time why I'm so laid back. Videogames don't make the person.

video games need to be banned! aparently they are influcing younger children & teenagers for a basis to real life crimes. Children need to be outside and be more active then sitting on their couch playing a violent video game that "lets out frustration" go dig a hole in your back yard and see how you feel.

I wonder what kind of jew killing video games the nazi played.... maybe humans are violent by nature, has that ever crossed your minds? People will remain violent with or without video games. I have played first person shooters, and violent video games, throughout my life and i consider myself a very calm person. You cant blame any violent act on video games. Read your history book. People have been violent since the beggining of time.

Oh yes that must be true becuase after playing halo 3 or ninja Gaiden I want to pick up a weapon and go on a mad killing spree...

This kind of thing has been happening for years people blaming violence on something just to hide the truth. First it was TV then music and now it video games whats next huh you tell me.

The point is video games dont make me violent anf i'm sure none of my friends have killed anyone yet and noone I know its stupid and not true!

wel i think kids shouldnt be allowed to play violent video games because it could be making them deppresed and go kill some body parents should now this amd do something about it

This can be written off as infactual, misrepresenting, crotchety propaganda. Do your own honest research, not just the parts that erroneously warp to the effect your desire. You should also try not to let your bias so obviously flow through your statistics and writing.

wow, i played GTA 3 and i never changed. So all you doctors who are worried about music and games affecting children, should be trying to cure diesases! Kids will blame the actions on anything just so they can get away from it. And all you protective mothers, listen to this, if you over protect your kids and once they leave the house, they are more likey to do drugs or kill or other crimes. So what would you rather have? Computer anamations dying, or real people dying?

From,
Some one who isn't clueless

I've done quite a bit of research into the subject. Studies, surveys, looking for all that I can.

The evidence for video games causing violence are a mix of hooking children up to machinery and taking heart rates, blood pressure, ETC, and judging their violence based on that. Putting them in simple punishment games, likely not associated with violence and perfectly safe on the children, and surveys that show a correlation between violence and poor grades, arguments, ETC, but have no grounds to say they're connected.

Evidence for video games not causing violence, surveys that show, varying between "no" "some" and "frequent" amount of play, that those who rated the best in grades (which unlike the previous survey, were their actual grades and not the grades the children said they had) and having the best attitudes about themselves, and the least arguments fell generally in the "some", those who showed the worst attitudes were a mix of the "no" and "frequent" amounts. A study where they had a hundred and twenty children play a violent video game, and looked at how they behaved before, during, and after play to judge the effects. A vast majority were unaffected, those who were already violent did react but the behavior was not created by the game, and hyperactive children calmed down.

In the end, looking more and more, even in the survey that didn't have grounds to say there was a connection between video games and violence, it seems that there is one minor link. Those who are already violent are drawn to video games. Like movies, and any other form of media. Except people have already started to pay less attention to movie controversy and more attention to game controversy. I'm sure fans of the ridiculous new Rambo film are enthralled at this.

There's plenty more I could say to defend video games, such as studies from "Bureau of Justice Statistics", of which show a steady decline and record lows in just about all forms of violence we have a crime for, especially in the teenage demographic that everyone is so concerned about.

Sure, you can say those are unreliable for the real amount of crimes going on, but with violent crimes dropping by the billions, and homicides committed by teenagers at a record low since they first started taking these statistics, there is a little more than some statistical discrepancy going on there.

Pretty much violent video games are nothing more than the latest target for these large controversies.

They were saying the same things about radio, TV, Dungeons & Dragons, Harry Potter, and it's all more or less the same thing.

In the end all it really comes down to is that, yes, these games are bad for little children. They're harmless for adults, but an eight year old child probably shouldn't be playing them. That's why the ESRB is there. Despite whatever someone may have heard, it's the most reliable rating system ever created. Look at the back. Not only does it give you a rating, but if it's a T for Teen or M for Mature game, it'll tell you exactly what material gave it that rating, and tell you whether there's a little, or a lot of it.

I'm not going to bother making any more of an argument. These are pretty much the real facts here, the researches made, the statistics out there.

Having red your article, I feel the best thing to now do would be to go through and point out the flaws as you’ve made them.

Firstly, you point out how many children and teenagers play computer games, and how many of them are violent. Well, these statistics don’t exactly work in your favour. If more and more kids are playing games, and violent crime rates are going down, surely this proves that there’s not a correlation. Of course, some games aren’t suitable for small children. There’s some things you just don’t want them to see. On the same note, you wouldn’t want a small boy to watch the silence of the lambs. Not because he might start eating people, just because it’d scare the bejebus out of him. If it does make him want to turn cannibal, I think there was a deeper problem to begin with.

You point out the fact that the people who committed columbine shootings played violent video games. Do you realize what percentages of kids don’t play games at all? 2.2%. What do you think the odds are that these kids were part of that group? Well, 2.2% funnily enough. It's not right to assume that the presence of video games was an active influence in making these people violent. In fact, studies have shown it's the other way around. Scientists have found that children who play violent video games play the game because they were already violent, and that’s what attracted them to the game in the first place. To use a modern example, observe that violent teenagers tend to own GTA. So this must be the cause, right? Well when you take into account that 25% of your population owns the GTA San Andreas alone, and that 70% of that group is around the age of 16-14, and this doesn’t include people who share or borrow games, the fact begins to seem kind of irrelevant. There is a genetic disposition that causes kids to soak up everything they see in video games and act it out in real life. It also affects about 1 in 15 million kids. This leaves us with about 440 people in the entire world. That’s assuming this gene actually exists in other countries.

As for the evidence you’ve presented, well, Maybe if you could prove that these kids had no violent tendencies before they played video games, I might be able to believe them. But especially when it come to the collage students, I’m inclined to believe there just may have been some other influences upon them in the last 20 years. You also have a much larger study group to prove anything on such a large scale as computer games. Maybe something at that university causes them to react more violently. Similarly, the test on second grade boys seems to have been targeted at those most likely to be affected by the studies. They’ve taken a group of young boys, with a violent disposition, encouraged them to do something violent, then found that they act violent afterwards. What were they expecting to happen? One quote, however, does stand out to me. “On three of six questions, the children who had played the violent game responded more negatively about the harmful actions of a story character than did the other children.” Funny, that sounds somewhat like a good thing to me.

The correlation between more video games and lower grades is an obvious one. This is an effect that I’ve found to happen in my own life, and I’m not surprised to find it happens everywhere. And it reason is quite simple. The more time I spent on video games, the less time I spent studying. And grades dropped. What are the odds, eh? It works like that with anything. It not a matter of me becoming any stupider. If I spent 15+ hours a week reading, drawing or petting fluffy bunnies we would have seen the same result. It’s an issue of time management, that’s all. And with more and more children filling up more and more of their leisure time with computer games, no wonder we see this kind of result. The odds are going up and up the if you look into an under-achievers life, video games will be a part of it. It’s almost laughable to assume that if you decreased their video game time, they’d make up the difference with study. They’d just find some even more time wasting exercise to fill up their days. And how often do they look into the over achievers gaming habits. Most of the smartest people I know play computer games. They do so because they find it mentally stimulating. You don’t get that kind of mental workout from watching TV or reading. Look into the facts. There’s no proof that shows that video games are the cause for lost marks, it’s the time spent playing them. And you can hardly blame the game for that. You definitely can’t peg it on video games.

The comparison between Wolfenstein and mist is laughable. This kind of test needs to be carried out be somebody who understands video games. This guy probably hasn’t even played solitaire. Wolfenstein is a high action, fast paced game. Its engrossing, competitive and adrenalin building. If they’d chosen another game like this for the non-violent game, they would have found some decent results. Mist, however, is barely even interactive, much less engrossing and adrenalin building. The entire game consists of clicking the screen now and then. Sure, brain scans have shown that people tend to use the more violent, competitive part of the brain during game play. That’s because that’s what the game is simulating. A game is designed to involve you, and stimulate your mind. So during game play, you are likely to get a bit more competitive. It’d be no different if somebody were playing sports. Or playing a non-violent video game. It doesn’t mean that people are going to go and commit violent acts after playing, we don’t even know that this effect lasts after they leave the room. It just means the game designer has fulfilled their roll in making an immersing game that a gamer can get lost in. That is what we’re paying out money for.

At the end of the day, these statistics can only be trusted if found by somebody who understands game and the roll they play in the lives of those who play them. Psychiatrists claim that playing games decreases child’s social interacts. What they don’t realize is that games have become a part of his social interaction. Scientists say that teenagers play games instead of doing something that mentally stimulating, without realizing that a game is mentally stimulating. As Shigaru Miyamoto, the father of modern gaming, said, “we need to break out of this stereotype of a gamer… the child sitting in a darkened room with his face illuminated by the glow of the screen.” Why? Because this image is no longer true. When video games were first invented, they may have just been a way to waist and hour and 10c, but now they’ve evolved so far past that that the people who grew up in the arcade can no longer see what games have turned into. They’re a complex part of our society.

In the end, if you look into the statistics, not just at what somebody is trying to prove, you’ll find video games aren’t causing children to become violent. That’s just the hype from people who don’t understand them.

Congratulation to anybody who managed to read through this far. I think this reply has actually gone on longer then the article itself.

I am an Avid gamer. I spend graciously more than 30 hours a week playing video games. Violent, and not. I am writing this, not to say that you are wrong, however, to tell you something that I have learned from studying people myself.

Every single person on this planet has a different personality, different views on things, and different reactions. By personal studies, Video games can cause some people to become violent, however, the majority don't relate their gaming life to their real life at all. The chances of something like Columbine happening due to violent video games, is slim, and I don't believe it will happen.

I haven't read the entire article yet, I don't have time before I have to go, however, I printed it out and will read the rest of it soon.

Anyway, I am going to do more personal research and studies, and will make my ultimate decision at that point in time.