Do Video Games Contribute to Violence? BY: Will Czora
Do you or someone you know play popular game titles such as TitainFall, Destiny, Call of Duty, and other violent games? Have you seen or have had to been limited on your playing time because there or your parents don’t want you to turn into a raging Serial Killer? Well, it turns out that violent video games do not make people do violent acts.
Christopher J. Ferguson, chair of the psychology and communication department at Texas A&M International University, responded to the National Rifle Association reaction: "As a video game violence researcher and someone who has done scholarship on mass homicides, let me state very emphatically: There is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, like Twitter and Facebook, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth." Furthermore, he wrote in "TIME" magazine, "Our research lab recently published prospective results with teens in the "Journal of Youth and Adolescence" indicating that exposure to video game violence neither increased aggressive behaviors, nor decreased pro-social behaviors. Kids are not only exposed to violence in video games.
Television, film, music videos, commercials, video games, and other media forms play a dominant role in today's youth culture. Whether accessed through cellphones, video consoles, or computers, video games are ubiquitous in contemporary youth culture in the United States. Violent games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which allows players to steal cars, kill police officers, and pick up prostitutes, was the top title in the United States in 2004, 27.5 million copies worldwide when it was released. And people sent out messages of them playing the game. Even books subject kids to violence, and it has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault all distinguished authors. Violent video games, crude media do not contribute to youth violence. You have to be careful of making sure that you or someone you know does not merge together the fantasy world and the real world.
Do you or someone you know play popular game titles such as TitainFall, Destiny, Call of Duty, and other violent games? Have you seen or have had to been limited on your playing time because there or your parents don’t want you to turn into a raging Serial Killer? Well, it turns out that violent video games do not make people do violent acts.
Christopher J. Ferguson, chair of the psychology and communication department at Texas A&M International University, responded to the National Rifle Association reaction: "As a video game violence researcher and someone who has done scholarship on mass homicides, let me state very emphatically: There is no good evidence that video games or other media contributes, like Twitter and Facebook, even in a small way, to mass homicides or any other violence among youth." Furthermore, he wrote in "TIME" magazine, "Our research lab recently published prospective results with teens in the "Journal of Youth and Adolescence" indicating that exposure to video game violence neither increased aggressive behaviors, nor decreased pro-social behaviors. Kids are not only exposed to violence in video games.
Television, film, music videos, commercials, video games, and other media forms play a dominant role in today's youth culture. Whether accessed through cellphones, video consoles, or computers, video games are ubiquitous in contemporary youth culture in the United States. Violent games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which allows players to steal cars, kill police officers, and pick up prostitutes, was the top title in the United States in 2004, 27.5 million copies worldwide when it was released. And people sent out messages of them playing the game. Even books subject kids to violence, and it has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault all distinguished authors. Violent video games, crude media do not contribute to youth violence. You have to be careful of making sure that you or someone you know does not merge together the fantasy world and the real world.