The Desensitization Of Violent Video Games

906 Words4 Pages

Video games have put a mark on today’s pop culture. Numerous violent acts made the news in recent years and background checks confirmed that the offenders were addicted to playing violent video games. Politicians are trying to create new policies which will prohibit the production of such games, but they are opposed by the freedom of speech advocates. Even the rating system will not prevent children and young adults accessing video games with violent plots. Critics always debate the positive and negative values of entertainment. Some people think that the use of violent video games associates with an increase in hostility and a decrease in moral behavior. Others suggest that such games are useful for the positive development of social and intellectual …show more content…

Persistent contact to it diminishes normal understanding and self-consciousness of aggression and makes players inconsiderate of others’ distress and sorrow. People with weak psyche have a hard time distinguishing between virtual reality and the real world and think that it is common to express anger and malice and get rewarded for it. According to Scott Paeth, violence seems to be embedded in our DNA. For as long as there have been human beings, there has been violence. Humans are adept at brutality. There is no question that we are surrounded in popular media by depictions of violence, from The Walking Dead and the Call of Duty games to Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained (Paeth 11). Violence is very dramatic and people love drama. The recent increase of school shootings by teenaged gamers supports the side of the argument stating that video game violence transfers into the real …show more content…

They range from online casino scams and illegal downloads to suicides, murders, shooting sprees and massacres of large communities. Many people argue that aggressive behavior does not lead to actual violence, but the reported incidents were associated with video game playing culprits. According to Harvey Roy Greenberg, these deranged young men are all too often time bombs, ignored because no one hears the ticking concealed by their mask of sanity (Greenberg 1). Public media relates violent incidents to mental illnesses, but not all perpetrators are crazy. It is logical that desensitization to violence and aggressive behavior will lead to unlawful acts, especially without the presence of close adult supervision and positive