ipl-logo

Are Video Games More Savior Than Scourge Essay

1643 Words7 Pages

Are Video Games More Saviour Than Scourge?
Julian Hyland
Rothwell Period B
5/29/18
In the wake of the brutal Santa Fe High School massacre, and many other shootings before it, fingers are pointed at all sorts of problems. From gun safety, to mental health, and even to a lack of faith; no person, idea, group or object is safe from taking the blame. But one particular topic keeps turning up and sticking out like a sore thumb:

Video games.

“Many have lost empathy to their victims by watching hours of video, violent games.” said Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, just 2 days after the tragedy in Santa Fe. Patrick shares this sentiment with many other people, including the NRA and President Trump, but the information they give to fight for their stance is minimal, and when counter-assertions are made, they are flawed in logic and facts. These arguments are often made to cover up the bigger issues. Studies show that video games do not cause violent behavior, and instead of isolating people …show more content…

However, this is not the case. Target, GameStop, EB Games, and many other popular game retailers directly state in their policy that they do not sell M rated games to minors without a parent or guardian present. The only way a minor could get their hands on an ill-rated game would be through plain bad parenting. Many scientists agree that video game usage must be moderated to set amounts of time, and sometimes kids play too much and get distracted from their school work, but that’s just a manner of bad parenting. Parents also have the responsibility of setting limits, so there should be no reason why a child would have problems caused by video games. This proves that video games are not the cause of violence, and, to counter-assert Dan Patrick, even if they did, the Santa Fe shooter had no record of playing them at

Show More
Related
945 Words | 4 Pages

In his article “Shooting in the Dark,” Benedict Carey argues that video games depict explicit or violent content stimulate aggressive behavior within gamers. He argues that video games like Mortal Kombat, Call of Duty, and Battlefield 3 increase aggressive urges and that exposure to these games leads to real-world hostilities. He mentions incidents like the young men who opened fire at Columbine High School and at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado—video gamers who seemed to be acting out some “dark digital fantasy”—to uphold his position. He believes a dose of violent video games can cause people to act “more rudely” than they would otherwise. Although he describes how violent video games may stimulate aggressive or hostile behavior, Carey’s argument can be challenged because there are other factors that can influence individuals to act violent and hostile.

Read More
700 Words | 3 Pages

Sternheimer begins with introducing us to a “first person shooter” game called “Doom”(214). With this multi-billion dollar game industry rising, she points out that there are three school shooting cases that the press emphasizes the shooters being “video-game experts” (215) to the game Doom, only making the “critics’ predictions” (214) about video games come true. Sternheimer begins by explaining how video game violence has become “folk devils” (214). This term allows media and politicians to “channel the blame and fear to remedy what many believe to be a growing problem” (214). Politicians are one of the main factors in targeting video games as the leading cause of violent behavior in teens, according to Sternheimer.

Read More
1152 Words | 5 Pages

In the essay, “Do Video Games Kill?”(214), Karen Sternheimer discusses the wide spread idea that videogames are the cause for “young killers”(220) . Sternheimer opposes the idea that violent video games produce criminal behavior in young people. The influence video games have on young people is spiraling out of control, according to Sternheimer. The blame for this spiral is the media. The influence the media has on video games focuses on the stereotype that the white middle-class male video gamer is more susceptible to violent behavior.

Read More
1235 Words | 5 Pages

14 June 2016. This article talks about the possible dangers violent video games have on children. The issue stems from a school shooting at the hands of two avid gamers who played the game Doom one of the original action games. They make connections between the violence they experience in the game, and how that could have impacted their decision to murder 13 students.

Read More
941 Words | 4 Pages

Video games are more popular than ever, with the value of over 17.68 billion U.S dollars. Yet with that amount of success, comes criticism. Video games have caused much concern, especially among conservative non-gaming pundits. 18 years ago, the 1993 video game Doom and 1994 Doom 2: Hell on Earth were allegedly an inspiration to the high school massacre at Columbine and received the title as the worst school shooting in American history. The police reports revealed that Eric Harris, one of the culprits, had created a private website mainly to provide commentary about the levels of the video game Doom; in addition, the site not only spread hate and violence, but it also spread death threats and plans of killing certain individuals.

Read More
1706 Words | 7 Pages

The perpetrators of the massacre such as school shooting have drawn a considerable amount of attention on computer games containing violence. In response to this, the theoretical relationship between violent game play and aggressive behaviour has been a centre of psychological research and such attention is unlikely to decrease over a short period of time as the massacre is believed to be associated with adolescents who play violent computer games (Granic, Lobel & Engels, 2013). The term ‘computer games’ which is used substitutionally with ‘video games’, refers to a game that can be played on a variety of electronic and digital devices from computers to televisions, mobile phones, home consoles and other types of machines (Commonwealth of Australia,

Read More
1901 Words | 8 Pages

Ever since the advent of the truly interactive video game – especially first person shooter games – people have been looking for signs that such media has a negative effect on. Games that are seen as violent have come under a lot of scrutiny and never more so when some tragedy happens and the perpetrator is known to play violent video games. In this paper, I will be looking at the effects that video games have had on society and I will come to the conclusion if they are good or bad for us. Gaming has gone from something that only nerds do to an

Read More
913 Words | 4 Pages

he said that it 'becomes like photographing words'. He believed that Eisenstein and other Swedish silent film directors were a lot more visual than any recent films.(Nykvist 1998) The close-up shot is often taken for granted and is used everywhere and sometimes used for no particular reason other than being a safety shot. However, it has only been taken for granted after decades of establishment. "It(close-up) does not only reveal new things but gives meaning to the old"(Balazs 2009).One of the most obvious functions of a close up that a close up does is that it makes one notice elements not noticed before and by doing that it is more revealing of things that one takes for granted.

Read More
872 Words | 4 Pages

“Video games provide a fun escape from reality. Though, they are portrayed as violent, lazy, and a waste of time by some.” (ASAP Science) It is very typical for the regular people of today to see kids and adolescents playing all sorts of video games, from shooting to racing to strategy, either in their home or at their friend’s home. Many kids play games from franchises such as Call of Duty or Halo.

Read More
923 Words | 4 Pages

Social scientists have been specifically studying the influence of video games since the 1980’s. As time has gone on, video games have gone from harmless Pac-Man to games specifically made for killing people and remake a digital version of war.

Read More
1017 Words | 5 Pages

Violent Video Games The culprit? While video games certainly have a decorated history of violence, they have been unfairly attributed for real life violence for way to long. Games with violent undertones have been in existence for nearly forty years. Attempts are continually made to focus on the violent effects that these video games supposedly have on players of all ages.

Read More
983 Words | 4 Pages

A recent content analysis by the research organization Children Now shows that a majority of video games include violence and about half of the violent incidents would result in serious injuries or death in the "real" world. Claim1 Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behavior or school performance. But it concluded that fears that generations of young people are growing up with their development impaired by exposure to violent video games are no more likely to be borne out than previous “moral panics” over television and other media. Playing one-player games is not always negative if you do it moderately.

Read More
1183 Words | 5 Pages

There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begins for their life.” ( 6) There are several ideas that say young people benefit from these violent video games “Surprisingly, playing video games can help our physical, mental, and emotional health.” It helps them to improve hand eye coordination and thinking ability. These benefits are not worth the risk of being influenced by violent video games. (7) All in all the research and officials say that violent video games affect how children, teenagers and young adults act.

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

Research shows that at least 83% of children in the US aged between 8-12 years are involved in video gaming once a month. This elevated number of video gaming has had its fair share of effects on its consumers. For instance, video games have positively influenced children to work together in completing various tasks, and often improve a child’s thinking capacity, especially through solving puzzles (Anderson et al, 2007). However, the contentious issue has been the effects of violent games on children, which are often negative to their well-being. In short, violent video games increase the aggressiveness of a child, and may eventually cause mental ill health.

Read More
1031 Words | 5 Pages

In our time, technology has become one of our essential things in life; specifically video games. Video games are electronic system used to run games. They involve human interaction specially teenagers. Many researches have been done on the effects of video games showing that there is positive and negative impacts. As we know not all video games contain violent contents, but most of them are violent and mentally dangerous.

Read More

More about Are Video Games More Savior Than Scourge Essay

Related Topics

Open Document