Throughout all of history people have been killing other people… and it seems that after every murder, something has to be blamed. in the 60s, rock and roll was ‘the devils music’ in the 50s comic books rotted the mind and in the 40s tom and jerry convinced kids that they could survive an anvil to the face. Nowadays mainstream media outlets explain that video games like call of duty ‘desensitise’ murder and ‘train children how to kill’ but is any of this really true?
Over 70% of 13-15 year olds in first world countries play video games and the majority of them play video games depicting murder and violence. I mean, almost every day I go home and shoot somebody in the face with a shotgun. Does this make me a violent person in real life? The way the media talks about video games makes them sound like an abomination, like they are this horrible disturbing thing, after the sandy hook elementary school shootings in America, one headline read “games use assault rifles like the one used in the sandy hook massacre” then saying that mass murderer Anders Breivik admitted to honing his skills in call of duty prior to shooting 69 people at a Norwegian summer camp. So basically, the media is claiming that video games are ‘combat simulators’ or ‘combat training’ and that children are fed these skills on how to kill people.
I tried using a gun once. It was a 22 calibre hunting rifle and it had a scope and everything, it was pretty cool and I was eager to try it out. but as soon as I picked it up I just stood there and I was like “how the hell do I use this?” my friend who owned the gun showed me how to load it and turn the safety off. I lay down and put the scope up to my eye (as I assumed they do it in video games) and aimed at a can down range. But as soon as I pulled the trigger the gun recoiled and the scope went back with it and gave me a black eye… I had no idea what I was doing. Shooting a gun is harder than it looks and I don’t believe that video games are doing a good job at training us how to use them.
So what is the true cause of violence in children? Sometimes violence can be caused by hidden mental conditions like ADD or depression. And in some cases it is the lack of video games that causes violence. A study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found that playing video games actually had a very slight calming effect on youths with attention deficit and depressive symptoms. There was a recent story of a 13 year old boy that was grounded from playing call of duty and decided to sexually abuse and then murder his own mother with a hunting rifle. For me, blowing people up in a video game can be a real stress reliever.
Possibly the main reason that young people can become violent is the way they are raised, if somebody is taught the difference between right and wrong, if somebody is understands the difference between right and wrong, and if they know the difference between real and fake, then they never going to kill somebody. No normal person, living a normal life will start playing a round of call of duty, kill like 3 people and then decide “wow. I must kill everybody.” And then takes their dad’s hunting rifle out and starts shooting people. It doesn’t happen, and if it does happen. Then there was already something wrong with the person to begin with.
