Essay: Are violent video games detrimental?

Our world is facing huge advances in technologies, and one of the most revolutionary inventions are video games. Video Games are not something new to our societies; their history goes as far back as the early 1950s but it didn’t reach public until the 1970s when gaming consoles, home computer games, and arcade video games. Since then, according to a state of the industry report by Spill Games (2013), it has won the heart of 1.6 billion people from all over the world. Moreover, as reported by Entertainment Software Association (2013) people from all ages and the average game player age 31 years old. With the development of video games, violent video games took over the market, with a controversial issue has been whether violent video games contribute to violent and criminal behaviors or not. In fact, some argue that violent video games use correlates with an increase in aggression, violence, crimes and a decrease in prosocial behavior (caring about the welfare and rights of others) while others see that there is no link between violent video games and violent acts and that it has a lot of positive effect on people such as stress relief.  But Violent video games do not contribute to violent and criminal behaviors, because first they have many positives effects on humans and because there isn’t enough evidence to support the claim that these games cause people to act crazy.
On the one hand, violent video games have many positive effects on us, they teach skills that we don’t even learn at school. According to studies done by the university of Rochester led by Daphne Bavelier (cognitive researcher and brain scientist), these games train the player’s ability to make make fast decisions without losing accuracy. In order to complete the game’s story, the player will face many obstacles that will teach him how to respond to challenges and frustration as they will improve his problems solving, analytical and pattern recognition skills. These games will teach gamers patience and perseverance because in order to get o the end he will have to repeat some hard levels and they will also train the memory to automatically sort what information to keep and what information to disregard. In addition, contrary to the popular opinion, these games will raise the player’s situation awareness, he’ll become more attentive to what is going on around him, as Daphne Bavelier stated “when people play action games, they’re changing the brain’s pathway responsible for visual processing”. Last but not least, help relieve stress. As human beings we have impulses, states playing violent video games can have positive effects on the human mind, as Dr. Mark Colson, Experimental, Psychologist and researcher in video games at Middlesex university, said in an interview: “People have many impulses, and it can be very psychologically healthy to find an appropriate outfit for those impulses” so video games are like punching balls, they are a way of releasing stress and anger into a virtual game. Moreover, Olsen, in “violent video games help kids manage stress”, also points at the fact that violent video games are a way of freeing one’s self from his anger and stress stating that 25% of girls and 49 % of boys use violent video games such as call of duty and Grand theft auto as an “outlet for anger”. So video games are a kind of break from reality, a release. Violent video games have many positive affect on the gamer because he acquires and develops important skills.
On the other hand, there isn’t enough evidence to say that the violent video games actually cause real world violence. Dr. Christopher John Ferguson, holder of a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and faculty expert in video game violent, and Dr. Mark Colson, experimental psychologist researcher in video games at Middlesex University, both stated that there is no true evidence that links video games to real world violent behavior.