Violent video games and its effect on gamers has been a debatable topic for decades. Although scientists have not came up with an official answer, many people have different opinions on where they stand in the argument. Many people believe violent video games can lead to a person committing a serious crime. There are video games that contain highly explicit and violent content that could trigger aggression and influence someone to engage in a heinous act.
During the sandy hook elementary school shooting, Adam Lanza murdered twenty six people including twenty kids and six adults. After investigating his home, authorities found posters of guns all over his room walls. It was revealed that Lanza had spent countless hours playing these violent games before plotting this terrible idea. The amount of time he put into those games eventually drove him crazy and led him to shooting those innocent people. Adam Lanza was a very antisocial person and did not enjoy being around crowds of people .
“ It was a beautiful house, but he lived in the basement.’’says Peter Wlasuk. While down there, he had plenty of time to himself. A study conducted on more than seventeen thousand people aged nine to nineteen throughout 2010 to 2017. The results showed that aggressive behavior rapidly increased in those years of investigating .
Many youth and teens would express extreme frustration as a result of “not winning” or having to restart the game. ‘I’m hearing more and more people saying the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.’ Donald J. Trump said in an 2018 report.
Violent and aggressive behavior can be detected many ways. An example could be pushing or hitting a peer and another example could be seriously injuring someone. These methods are used to determine how people respond after playing video games for hours and hours. Rigorous studies have been conducted for years and there has been evidence that conveys that video games can lead to mal behavior.
In 1983 General C. Everette believed violent video games was the reason people exhibited violent and aggressive behavior. A habit can take as little as three days to form. In this case, a video game can become very addictive quick. Once this happens, a person will soon skip out on the important things in life. Family and friends may become very distance as a result and it could lead to a teenager slacking in school. This can be very unhealthy as a result.
The addiction could lead to muscle pain and seizures. Also, since you’re inside your body will start to lack the outside necessities like vitamin D. Sleep deprivation will also start to affect you sooner or later. Violent video games have become very popular over the years, and crime rates have also went up magnificently. This is evidence that there is correlation between the two.
There was a case about a 9 year old killing his 13 year old sister over a video game. Monroe county sheriff Cecil Cantell states “ He’s just nine. I assume he’s seen this on video games. I don’t know if he knew exactly what this was going to do.” Younger players can be impacted the most. At this age, they are still trying to determine what is real or not and could have trouble telling the two apart.
“Playing violent video games probably will not turn your child into a psychopathic killer, but I would want to know how the child treats his or her parents, how they treat their siblings, how much compassion they have” Its very well known for younger children to be impacted more than older adults because there brain has not fully developed yet. ‘Everybody was more aggressive if they’d played a violent game than if they’d played a nonviolent game, and the more numb they were, the more aggressive they were in terms of blasting their opponent with loud noise through headphones,’ Bushman said. I have multiple examples of cases where kids have gotten in very serious trouble behind video games because they got a little to serious.
In the year of 2013 , A 14 year old named Nathan Brooks was disciplined because he received detention inside of school. A day after he was grounded , Mr. Brooks shot his mother and father while they were sound asleep in bed. Both of his parents miraculously survived shooting, Mr. Brooks was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in 2015 of 2 counts of assault in the first degree. “We did not feel that provided adequate protection for the community,” he said. “We feel this gives us a long enough sentence and monitoring.”. They felt that sentence was appropriate for Nathan brooks with a sentence of 10 years taking mental health classes.
There has been a lot of debates about whether video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series causes violent or aggressive behavior i will be discussing how they have a tremendous effect on the youth and possibly adults too. The video game Grand Theft Auto III was officially released by Rockstar Games on October 22nd 2001 and sold 7.9 million copies. Many parents did not want their children playing the video game because of its violence.
7 years later “ Rockstar Games” released Grand Theft Auto IV and sold more than three times the amount of copies it did in 2001.There were tons of bad reviews on the video game because of the explicit content it displayed. This included nudity, murder, and prostitution. These games are rated “M” for mature which specifically states you must be an adult aged 18 or older. Despite all of this, many kids who are younger currently own this video game.
As a result, parents have became very outraged because of their child’s addiction to the game.This video game has caused many deaths because of its violence in it .In 2003 , A man named Devin Moore stole a police car, And then proceeded to steal a gun, He got in pursuit with the police and then shot three of them , When he was taken into custody he stated “Life’s like a video game. You’ve got to die sometime”.
That is one of the many reasons parents does not want their children playing video games such as Grand Theft Auto. On the episode of 60 minutes it conveyed that there was correlation between the devin moore case and Grand Theft Auto . This depicts that there is a link between violent video games and criminal behavior.
There are multiple effects video games can have on your life and how you live it. A few examples could be preoccupation, health problems, suffering relationships, increased aggression, and poor performance. Preoccupation caused by video games can have a very harmful effect , if you become addicted you may begin to avoid activities that have no correlation with the game.This may also lead to you avoiding social interaction with others.
Another negative effect are health problems.Backaches, headaches, eye strain, and sleep deprivation are problems that are associated with playing video games for a long period of time.The University of texas states that gamers should limit themselves to two hours a day in front of a television. Another major problem gamers may face are suffering relationships . When you spend to much time playing the video game , you may lose interaction with your friends family and peers. This could also lead to you wanting to discuss video games.
Another example would be increased aggression.Violent video games may lead to aggressive actions, thoughts, or tendencies. It could also lead to high levels of frustration that you may take out on a loved one. The final example would be poor performance. After long hours of playing video games , your performance may be affected. Trying to operate with little to no sleep can be challenging and can result in losing focus or falling asleep in class.You will not be able to perform to your best ability. Parents should limit their child’s access to violent video games or video games all together.
