Faith Ivy

Leigh Moore

ENGL 1301

27 October 2017

Video game aggression

Violence in video games have remarkably become more popular and common through

the years, and upsettingly, so has aggression and violence in children, leading many parents to

believe that their childs video games are influencing such terrible behavior. Grand Theft Auto,

Call of duty, Assassins Creed, Fall out, Halo and Mortal Combat are just a few examples that fall

under this category. Ever since the 1999 massacre shooting at Columbine High School, debates

and arguments over this subject have intensified drastically. The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary

shooting raised even more questions due to the fact that the 20-year-old shooter was a well-

known avid gamer. Multiple studies have been done on whether violence in video games have

any correlation to violence in the real world, and many more are currently in progress, leaving

the deadly question still unanswered.

A large amount of people suggest that violence in video games can cause players to

become more aggressive, hostile, and even lose the ability to feel empathy; while others believe

that the video games dont necessarily cause violence, but desensitize the players. For instance, if

the players get used to seeing drugs, violence and hearing explicit language in the game, when it

happens in the real world, they may think it is common, and will not react as perhaps they

should. The Main reason behind these claims and suggestions, as multiple scientists believe, are

from how many legal cases there have been with the accused being known gamers that play

violent video games. Legal cases such as the 2014 Waukesha stabbing, where two young girls
were convinced stabbing their mutual friend would impress the fictional character, slender man;

the main character in the popular horror game slender man. A key point that many people seem

to forget, or simply not see the connection, is that many of these suspects have some sort of

mental disability or even past cases involving illegal activity.

In a recent study done by Dr. Gregor Szycik of the Hannover Medical School, he and a

few colleagues explore the long-term effects of playing video games containing violence. The

participants in the study were all male, as aggressive and abrupt behavior is more common in

men. All participants played a first-person shooter for at least two hours a day, every day, for

four years. The gamers were then compared with subjects who had no experience with any

violent video games. The questionnaire each participant was required to take showed no

differences in measures of empathy or aggression between non-gamers and gamers. (Frontiers,

2017)

The arguments and debates over this topic had become so popular that on April 26, 2005,

the state of California passed a ban that stated children under the age of eighteen cannot purchase

video games involving violence, sexual themes, and explicit language. The video game industry,

which had sales of over $7 billion a year at the time, vowed to challenge the ban in court; stating

that the ban went against the first amendment. In 2011, the ban was lifted by the Supreme Court,

arguing that the video games purchased by children are not the governments concerns, but the

parents; leaving most parents not too happy. (Liptak, 2011)

Multiple doctors, parents, and scientists believe further experiments and studies need to

be put into motion before they can prove that violence in video games does in fact have a

connection to violence and aggression in gamers and the real world. However, many parents

remain firm with their beliefs that the connection between virtual reality violence and real-life
violence is absolute, leaving many scientists to believe that the reason behind this is because of

the parents natural instinct to want to protect their children from any possible harm.
 Works Cited

Ferguson, Christopher and Cheryl Olson. "Video Game Violence Use among 'Vulnerable'

Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying among Children

with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms." Journal of Youth &

Adolescence, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 127-136. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10964-

013-9986-5. Accessed 10 Oct 2017

Valadez, Jose J. and Christopher J. Ferguson. "Just a Game After All: Violent Video Game

Exposure and Time Spent Playing Effects on Hostile Feelings, Depression, and

Visuospatial Cognition." Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 28, no. 2, Mar. 2012, pp.

608-616. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.11.006. Accessed 10 Oct 2017

Gottschling, Irimia R. Figure 2f from: Irimia R, Gottschling M (2016) Taxonomic Revision of

Rochefortia Sw. (Ehretiaceae, Boraginales). Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e7720.

Https://Doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e7720. Violent Video Games Found Not to Affect

Empathy, 8 Mar. 2017, doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f. Accessed 10 Oct 2017

Frontiers. "Violent video games found not to affect empathy: Study finds no link between long-

term playing of violent video games and changes in empathetic neural responses."

ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 March 2017. Accessed 12 Oct 2017

<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170308081057.htm>.