Why Video Games Don’t Cause Violence
The psychology and motives of a violent criminal can vary greatly. Many factors can shape and break a person’s mind, but a single subject is often blamed for violence across the world. Video games, which are meant for entertainment and recreation, are used as a scapegoat for destructive wrongdoings endlessly. However, I do not believe that digital worlds cause mental problems in the physical world, but rather these games cause no impact mentally, with evidence from high level studies and primary sources.
Firstly, most violent offenders have previously established mental issues and trauma, diagnosed or otherwise. A large example of this would be Eric Harris, a perpetrator of the Columbine High School massacre.
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Most games with violent aspects have other features that aren’t violent, or have nonviolent alternatives to complete objectives. Being violent is a choice, and some games even make a point to discourage violence, lest your gameplay be boring, bland, and rid of fun (see Undertale, Toby Fox).
There is even a study by Harvard University to show that both the university itself and parents of the children believe, in majority, that video games do not impact a child’s psyche (study results shown to the left). These studies also back up my previous argument that “most of the young perpetrators had personality traits, such as anger, psychosis, and aggression, that were apparent before the shootings and predisposed them to violence”. However, there are many cases of violence that the attackers themself linked their behavior to a game. A prime example of this would be Evan Ramsey, who shot his principal and a fellow student, and wounded two other peers with a shotgun. He claimed, "I did not understand that if I pull out a gun and shoot you ... you 're not getting back up. You shoot a guy in Doom, and he gets back up. You have got to shoot the things in Doom eight or nine times before it dies." But this, again, is refuted by previous mental illnesses or conditions. Ramsey suffered an abusive childhood, going as far as attempting suicide at age 10. He obviously had highly distorted views on