Do Video Games Lead to Violent Behavior

Do violent video games lead to criminal behavior?

Electronic equipment is becoming more and more advanced, so now young people are exposed to many new things. There are always a lot of children addicted to the world of the games. Thus, many people think it is time to get children away from video games, because they hold the opinion that violent video games are the primary cause of juvenile crime. Even a lot of scholars and experts think so. Plus a variety of relevant cases, which are blamed on violent video games, violent video games have been stuck a label of evil. When I carried out this research, I found an interesting thing. To those who do not play video games, it seems that the violent content of games undoubtedly has a certain impact on the players. To those video game players, they stand on the other side. So, do violent video games have a negative impact on the players?

To figure it out, we are supposed to know what is a violent video game. Obviously killing enemy cannot be regarded as an element of violence. Otherwise Super Mario is also a sort of violent game. I believe that there is no doubt that video game such as Grand Theft Auto 5 is a violent video game, but where exactly do we set the line between violent and nonviolent games? The California law defines violent video game as a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being (rwjf.org).

Some recent research indicated that violent behavior had nothing to do with games. Via investigation, Professor Matthew Grizzard from University at Buffalo found that in shooting game players who played as terrorists would have more sense of guilt regardless of victory or defeat. Ferguson Christopher, a psychologist at the University of Westminster, also stressed that violent games were not related to the violent behavior in reality, and even children who liked to play violent games were less likely to bully their peers.

Every day, violent crimes are committed with seemingly no reason. In these cases, we desire to find a cause of problem in order to make sense of a senseless crime. Unfortunately, it is common for people to jump to conclusions and put the blame on an easy scapegoat instead of trying to find a true root cause (geekti.me). Media, such as movies, books and TV, have been scapegoats for violence for many years. With its ever-rising popularity and recent releases of games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Call of Duty, video games have become the most recent victim. Here are a few examples of crimes that video games have been responsible for.

In 2011, a riot occurred in London. A policeman shot an unarmed black man Duggan which was the leading cause of the riot. Relatives and friends of the deceased, and some other demonstrators, up to three hundred people, began to gather in front of the police station for Duggan’s death. People’s fury turned into flames. They burned the police cars, committed rob, and smashed shops. A demonstration, which was seeking justice, finally became a violent crime. Many rioters were arrested at the end. Local police thought that Grand Theft Auto had something to do with this riot because most of these criminals were young people.