Imagine a 10 year old kid playing a violent video game for the first time. A few years later he was still playing video games, except now he’s in jail for trying to imitate what he saw in those video games, and regretting what he did. Around 97% of kids in the United States that are ages 12-17 play video games and more than half of the 50 top-selling video games in the U.
S. have violence in them. Although many people believe that video games and violence have no link, there is a great deal of evidence supporting the fact that video games do in fact cause violence. There has been research done to show that these violent games lead to a gain in real life violence. According to the infotext graphic from OnlineUniversities.com titled “The Neurology of Gaming,” “When gamers play frequently, there is a decrease in prefrontal lobe activity. This can lead to altered moods and aggressive behavior, which can last even after the game is turned off.” Because of the person’s altered mood and anger it can cause them to possibly lash out to their friends and family due to the violent video games.
According to ProCon.org, “Violent video games require active participation and identification with violent characters, which reinforces violent behavior.” This means that since the player of the game is acting as the person in the game they are even more likely to copy the game in real life. There has also been cases where even more dangerous violence has happened because of violent video games. Cases of majorly dangerous violence have also been linked to these violent video games. As stated by ProCon.
org “Many mass shootings have been carried out by avid video game players: James Holmes in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting (2012); Jared Lee Loughner in the Arizona shooting that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others (2011); and Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway (2011) and admitted to using the game Modern Warfare 2 for training.” These people all have something in common, they played violent video games. These shooters killed a lot of people, possibly because of the violent video games they played before that may have influenced them. Also stated by ProCon.org “In 2002, the US Army released a first-person shooter game America’s Army to recruit soldiers and prepare recruits for the battlefield.
” This proves that violent video games make people violent because the US Army wouldn’t use them to train their soldiers unless they knew that they made you violent. Those facts prove that violent video games make people more dangerous and aggressive. There is a great deal of evidence supporting the fact that video games cause violence, even though many people believe differently. I hope that people from now on people will be informed on what violent video games do to people and there will be laws preventing younger kids from buying violent video games. Don’t be that 10 year old kid and grow up to imitate violent video games. You could go to jail and possibly regret it for the rest of your life.
