For:
Violent video games can be seen to increase violence in both young and old, men and woman. It has been shot that even brief exposure to violent video games can increase violence in people. Examples of this can be seen in shooting such as The Columbine Shooting, the Devin Moore case and even through medical and factual reasoning.
THE COLUMBINE SHOOTING
Two high schoolers, Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Kobold (17) took refuge in violent video games, they were seen as the social out casts of the school. These boys had been so immersed in these games making real life recreation and programming their own. It was told that their school had a similar layout to a game they were playing at the time. So it gave them the motive to plant a bomb (that didn't detonate), and shoot 12 kids and a teacher as well as wounding more than 20 other students. These boys committed suicide not long after. This shooting shows "clear” connections to violence in video games affecting young people.
DEVIN MOORE
Devin Moore had no criminal record until he finally found the courage to steal a car. The police chased and arrested him. While he was sitting in the police station it was told that he began getting restless, then he made his escape. He attacked a police officer and took his gun to shoot another police officer, he ran down the hallway where he stole the keys to a police car and drove away. Devin was said to have liked playing a game named 'Grand Theft Auto' this game included shooting and injuring police officer and stealing cars.
WHAT RESEARCH SHOWS.
There was an experiment conducted that included a child who dint play violent video games having a brain scan before and after being exposed to one for 30 minutes. This scan had shown that the amygdala increase in size. The amygdala controls emotions, research also shown that the child had an increase in fight or flight hormones such as adrenaline. Was it became of the realness of the video game of was it because the child was getting interested in the game?
Video Games can be bad of you in general. Wether there are violent or not. They can be addictive, time consuming, money consuming, distractions and can rob you of real life experiences. These games are sconred upon because of how they hook kids on to them.
ADDICTION
People go around during the day normal as they usually do. For a gamer what they usually do is think about hoe they can get back home to read their gaming magazine, play their game, talk to their virtual friends or level up when the get home. Video game are sometimes put in such high priority that studying, working or doing daily chores seem, irrelevant. They are barely seen doing annoying else but gaming, the also only talk about gaming and the cost or pricing of a current, new or upcoming game.
COSTING
To be bland video games are expensive. You need to sp11end money on first the right console or the right computer for it to be compatible, then you need to pay foe the CD it self and gamers never have just one CD they and least 5-50 game CD even after that you would ned to buy controllers and gaming keyboards. Depending on how long you play your electricity bill will do through the roof! What do you use the pay your electricity bill? Money. Everything I this argument comes down to money even if you not own it.
DISTRACTING
Video games are pulled to be more important than things like homework or studying for an upcoming test. It has been seen that gamers font do anything more that what they have to and gaming. They also have little priorities and therefore meaning that they procrastinate a lot using gaming as an excuse.
ROBBING
Gamers are seen to choose their virtual reality wasteland rather than quality time with loved ones in reality. Thy would choose adventurous games over having and adventure with friends they would choose tho have a fake date in their game that go out with their S.O they would rather play anything over spending time with their family. Gamers do not like to lease the comfort of their home if they haven't 'levelled up', or if they lose a round they will keep playing until they win it.
Although there are massive holes through the evidence as technology advances we will see changes in children through the coming days of game evolution.
Against
Although there is 'evidence' claiming that video games can affect your mental health you can easily see that all of these investigations throw a casual relation between violent video games and real life violence. The US Supreme Court ruled against banning VVGs. Believe it or not all of their research isn't working because not all teenagers that play VVG commit mass murders they can distinguish between virtual reality and appropriate public behaviour, some teenagers have said that they use video games to escape their problems and release there stress but did they commit a school murder? No they dint because people who play these games have a level of self control when playing these games as people who commit these mass murders do not do it because of a video game.
CRIME + VIOLENT VIDEO GAME = 'RESEARCH'
Studies claiming casual relationships between video games and real world violence is extremely flawed. In this research they failed to factor in things like past family mental illness or the child's current mental state. The Columbine shooters for example could of had a past mental illness or a problem in their family to drive them there, you cant just look at how they play video games and what type of video games they are and then blame it on them.
Video game experiments run for 10- 30 minutes and scientists would take a brain scan immediately after playing a video game makes you have a large range of emotions varying form excitement to fear scientists know this so they take a brain scan right after showing the growth of the amygdala, over time will the size of it shrink? Most probably so. But we cannot see that as no scan has been takes after a period of time.
Researchers also use artificial methods to 'prove' that violent video games can increase violence in young people such as the amount of volume in a sound blast. Although the kids who played violent video games usually did give a louder sound blast, do we know how many kids? Or how many kids fro the other side gave a louder sound blast? Do we know if they have factored in stress and mental health of these school going kids? These questions may have been asked in the US Supreme Court.
US SUPREME COURT
The research that was conducted to the Supreme Court in the U.S. the Supreme court denied them from banning violent video games in California. The also requested that there should be an age limit to who buys the games (sort of like the age limit on alcohol). The court denied the whole case as Justice Scalia wrote that the reacher conducted was extremely flawed and didn't not prove that it made MINORS act aggressively.
MASS SHOOTINGS?
Over 71% of teenagers in the U.S play violent video games, does that mean that all of that 71% commit mass school shootings? There were 71 school shootings between 1982 and 2015 in seven of which had a shooter under the age of 18.
Millions of kids over the world play violent video games but do you see all of them committing mass murders? A study conduct shows that of the 41 attackers (with a cause) 27% had an interest in violent movies, 24% had an intent in violent books, 37% had a interest in writing their own violent stones and 12% had an interest in violent video games.
Even when we see that 12% had an interest in violent video games that docent mean that those video games made them run pear shaped to murder other people, for all we know they could have done it for fun! There is no way of us knowing that they killed her people because of a video game. In a survey it was shown that 4 out of 5 households with a male child owns a video game system, the average time males play video games is 9 hours and only a small percentage dimply violent behaviours. 90% of those young males play Violent Video Games so stating that a murderer played violent video games is almost as useless as stating that they wore clothes too.
TEENAGERS AND GAMES
By the age of 7 children can tell the difference between cartoon/ animation and the real world. By the age of 10 usually boys start playing video games. By the age of 13 they start to enjoy playing violent video games. After the tender age of 7 we as human can distinguish between a made up world and reality. If this theory of violence in videos did actually work then all children that read, or watch the Harry Potter Series or watched Tom and Jerry as a child should be aggressive and violent to other kids. But they don't. If kids do play violent video games then they should have a level of self control.
A survey was conducted where the saw the reasons to why kids played video games. Most of the reasons that came in were for kids to have a way to manage their emotions:
—> 61.9% of them played to relax after a stressful day of school
—> 47.8% of them play to forget their problems for a bit
—> 45.4% of them played to release anger.
"Boys use games to experience fantasies of power and fame to explore and master what they perceive as exiting and realistic environments to work through their problems in life" this was an extract from a novel on video game violence and kids.
My Opinion
Do you remember, when you were a young child, stuff that you would do with your friends together? Or maybe the moment when your parents took you to the nearest park where you could find kids around your age, and you played together? You would play many games with them, hide and seek, etc. When you were playing around, suddenly one of your friend tripped himself and fell on the ground, he cried. His mother came, rushing, and calmed him down. After he calmed down, all of the sudden, out of nowhere, your parents and other kids’ parent came and told you that you could not play anymore, because you could fall like the earlier kid and hurt yourself. That does sound stupid, does it not? I mean, just because one kid got hurt, because he did not pay attention of his surrounding or maybe just because of bad luck, and all kids, had to stop playing.
The same logic can be applied to video games as well. Why a few cases of criminal activities that were “connected” to video games could affect millions, hundreds of millions gamer on earth?
First, there is no evidence that video games alone caused school shooting incidents by students in these past 10 years. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General’s report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centred on mental stability and the quality of home life of the accused, not media exposure. So it was not because of video games, but more likely it was the offenders’ parents’ fault by letting, or even the cause, of this unhealthy home life. Most of my peers are gamers, but have they shot people at this school? You are not seeing any guns poke out of any of my peers pocket, are you not? Moral panic over video games is clearly exaggerated because the offenders are gamer. Most studies found that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. The competition found in many video games may be at the root of that aggression and not necessarily the violent content. Which means that kids who play violent video games are already aggressive people before they played them and aggressiveness does not mean violence. Banning video games due to those incidents is unreasonable.
Second, video games do not turn kids into antisocial. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. The results of research conducted by Morgan Tear and Mark Nielsen from the University of Queensland (Australia) concludes that playing violent video games does not diminish prosocial behaviour. In other words, it doesn’t make participants anti-social as some research has claimed. This information was posted in a book named "journal PLOS ONE". Which means that they interact with people. If they had any problems, they would talk to their parents or for some kids, they rather talk to their friends. They wouldn’t lock themselves inside their own room when they have problems like the antisocialist would do, that would lead to depression and many more problems that might cause them to snap, and go crazy like killing people. Banning video games due to this reason is unreasonable as well.
Third, If video games are banned the economy will fall because forty percent of American adults play video game regularly. Since video game sales make over twenty one billion dollars a year the economy benefits from them in several ways. When a video game is bought, a state tax is put on it which helps the economy. Also many people are paid to create these video games which provides more jobs. In fact, video games account for one third of the average monthly core entertainment spending in the United States. People, can you imagine what would happen if video games were banned? Anyway, do you know that games can be used to treat some diseases? Researchers from the University of B.C. are using a simple game to find new ways to treat symptoms of schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.