Introduction
Video games have been invented approximately in the early 1970s. In 1971, the first arcade video game named Computer Space was produced by Nutting Associates. In the next year, an arcade game company named Atari released a game called Pong, which is basically a game about ping-pong.
The gaming company started their journey by creating fun games in order to entertain the players. However, since the time goes by, it seems like video games are developing more game ideas to exceed competitors. They evolve games from fun and bubbly games like Donkey Kong, Puzzle Bubble, and Super Mario Bros into multiplayer based games with better quality and the capability of telling stories while we play the game. Movies and music have been replaced by video games as highest selling form of entertainment media in America.
On the other hand, the social phenomenon of video games has led many arguments debating whether it has brought out violent behavior on society that plays video games especially teenagers and youths. The reason of this argument is because of the release of some games that are not bringing good influences, such as Call of Duty which is a game about eliminating our opponents using several weapons, Grand Theft Auto which allows player to be a criminal in a city and let us do violent things, and many more. These kinds of games have been proven that they have brought bad behaviors into the players especially children and teenagers. Because of that, this social phenomenon has been chosen as an essay topic in order to be discussed further.
Literature review
According to a research by American Psychological Association, it shows that there is a connection between violence and the usage of video games. As it mentioned on BBC.com, video games can increase the level of aggressiveness of someone in thinking, influencing, and the most dangerous effect is the decreasing level of socializing.
In accordance with Dr. Mark Coulson, a psychology professor in Middlesex University, video games will lessen someone’s empathy level and absence of sensitivity in social relations because they tend to focus on their wants when they are playing video games.
Another factor that brings violence in video games is the motivation of someone to win a particular game. The desire to reach the highest position in game can affect players’ emotions to do violence.
Professor Ryuta Kawashima from Tohoku University in Japan has done a research about brain mapping on children who are playing video games, and the result is surprising. The research shows that video games actually stop the process of the front side of our brain which called the frontal lobe to develop, and because of that, it has the potential to decrease the ability to control their social behavior. The implication of video games on children will eventually increase the number in society who likes violence, and those children will do destructive things if they keep playing video games and this behavior might be carried on until they grow up.
In 2000, two American psychologists did a research about the impact of video games to aggressive behavior. The first study shows a positive connection between violent video games and aggressiveness. In the second study, the exposure of violent video games also shows the increasing aggressive thoughts and activities. Both studies show the aggressiveness trend from other psychology experts such as Anderson and Bushman. This research can be a basic overview that violent video games can cause aggressive behavior to most of children and teenagers who play video games.
So, what kind of behavior that is considered as aggressive anyway? According to a psychology expert Rita L. Atkinson, aggressive behavior if a behavior that is purposely done in order to hurt other people either physically or verbally and destroy things. The main key word for this behavior is purposeful. Hence, an action can be called an aggressive behavior if that action is done purposely by the doer.
In psychology world, there is a theory called Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, a neurologist expert from Austria. In his theory, Freud mentioned that the majority of our actions that we have done is based on our instinct. In our instinct is not fulfilled, there will be frustration that can raise our aggressive impulse. So, basically, aggression or aggressive behavior is the effect of our unfulfilled instinctive impulse.
This theory then was developed further into the hypothesis of frustration-aggression that stated, “If someone’s attempt to make reach an objective got blocked, an aggressive impulse will raise that motivates a behavior to destroy the barrier either people or objects that cause him frustration” (Dollard, 1939). Not much different from Freud’s theory, in this theory, aggression is an impingement of frustration.
Discussion
There are some incidents that are believed caused by video games. For example, last year, an 18-year old teenager in Germany killed nine people and injured 35 people, which 10 of them were hurt seriously. The attacker was a fan of first-person shooter video games called Counter Strike. This game does contain some weapon knowledge, tips, and strategies on how to kill your opponents.
Another example is in 2012, a 20-year old man named Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. When the police investigate Lanza’s background, it was revealed that Lanza owned several video games that are considered bringing negative impacts, which are Call of Duty, Dead or Alive, and Grand Theft Auto.
Some video games often require players to simulate violent actions, such as stabbing, shooting, or dismembering human body with sharp weapons. Two teenagers in Tennessee shot at passing cars and killed one drive told the police that their action was inspired by playing Grand Theft Auto III. A psychology professor at University of Missouri named Bruce Bartholow mentioned that these violent video games encourage people to participate actively in violence more than any other media. A peer-reviewed study in 2014 figured out that first-person shooter games have trained players to be more accurate in shooting a gun outside a game
Violent video games are more likely influence children to imitate violent behaviors of the characters and have difficulty to differentiate reality and fantasy. Young children who play video games might get confuse to make a difference between violence that is in fantasy world and in reality. This is concerning because they might mimic video games’ violent actions and apply them in reality and they won’t even realize that those actions are inappropriate and might be against the law because they might believe that they are the character they are pretending to be when they are playing.
However, these incidents cannot be the benchmark whether video games really make their players develop aggressive behavior, because not all of the players do kill people. It is not proven either whether these killers that are mentioned above killed people only because of video games or are there any other factors.
There are also some facts proving that violent video games do not cause violent behaviors. For instance, video games are proven may decrease crime because players are busy playing the games instead of doing violent actions. Players tend to stay at home or internet center to play video games and not going anywhere which resulting to decreasing crime numbers.
The United States Supreme Court also mentioned that violent video games do not cause teenagers and youths to act aggressively. They rejected the idea of banning the sale of violent video games to minors because they do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively.
Conclusion
Although so many researches have been done in order to solve the problem whether is violent video games really lead their players to act violent, the answer to that question is still uncertain. There are still many arguments, pros and cons debating this social phenomenon. Further research must be done in order to solve this problem. There are some factors that haven’t been discussed, such as the role of parents because hold the most important role in surveillance of their children. Therefore, a research regarding the role of parents in supervising their children’s form of entertainment can be done in order to explain unresolved aspects of this social phenomenon.