Blog #10: Pros and Cons

For my topic I've decided to use violence in video games and how it affects society. The two sides of this topic is that violence in video games contributes to youth violence while the opposite position is that it does not. Both sides have many valid arguments, but I am going to side with those that believe violence in video games does not transfer into real life youth violence. One comparison that I found interesting was between the FBI and Secret Service. The FBI lists playing violent video games as a common behavior of people in school shootings. On the other hand, the Secret Service states that school shooters showed much more interest in other violent forms of media (movies, books, and their own writing) than in violent video games. Another source as to why violent video games do not contribute to youth violence is that, since the rise in popularity of violent video games, violent juvenile crimes have decreased 49.3%. A reason as to why this is happening is because aggressive behaviors in adolescent boys are reduced because it serves as a substitute for "rough play." Youth replace "rough play" with multi-player video games like Modern Warfare or Halo to establish dominance among their peers.

                One problem that source claims is that violent video games desensitize players to violence in real life. Another study shows that adolescents who play violent video games during the beginning of the school year were more aggressive later in the year than those who did not. To counter this, an interview of the authors of Grand Theft Childhood reveals that adolescents who played no video games were at a much higher risk of being a part of violent actions in school than kids who did play video games. Another example is between teenagers who committed murder in the United States and those in Japan. Teenage murders in America were significantly higher than those in Japan, and the per capita sale of video games in japan was also significantly higher than those in America. These shows that video games do not contribute to violent crimes and may even reduce them.