Dipankar Chakravorty

Inquiry Bases Research

How is violence in video games influencing teenagers to commit school violence in the US?

“Senator Joseph Lieberman who referred to violent video games as “digital poison” (CNN 1997). In 2005, Senator Hilary Clinton declared that “playing violent video games is to an adolescent’s violent behavior what smoking tobacco is to lung cancer” (DeCamp and J. Ferguson).

“A general consensus on video game violence effects has been elusive, with great debate occurring among scholars in this field. Some scholars have concluded that strong video game violence effects on aggression have been conclusively and causally demonstrated in wide segments of the population. Others have concluded that video game violence may have only weak effects on youth aggression, or may only influence some youth, particularly those already at-risk for violence” (J. Ferguson).

Overview

Video games have been progressing rapidly to provide the best output it can provide its users. The goal of the video game companies now days are to provide the best realistic experience it can to its costumers so that they can feel the game as if it’s happening in real life. With all those graphics improving with more technology involved, video games have become close to perfection on outputting the real-world pictures to the players.

“According to psychologists and psychiatrists, 97% of teenagers view video games and 85% of those video games are violent” (Darron Simon). There are concerns about these violent contents that video games are offering to its players. Specially the teenagers who are the biggest consumers of video games. According to a peer reviewed article, “A nationally representative study of video game play among adolescents in the United States showed that 97% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years play computer, web, portable, or console video games. More than half of these teenage population play video games containing some sort of violence (Adachi and Willoughby).

To think of how violence in video games is becoming a major topic to debate on is not irrelevant. There have been major mass shootings in schools where the criminal was a first shooter game player. After a recent mass shooting at Stoneman Douglass High School in Florida, President Donald Trump said that the level of violence in video games are shaping young people’s thoughts (Susan Scutti). This is not the only case where mass shooting was related to violence in video games. There are cases where the shooter was a first shooter game addict and committed a mass school shooting.

Video Games and Aggression

Critics saying that the young audience, such as the teenagers, playing violent video games go outside and start doing what they see in the video games are not true. There is no evidence to prove it neither there are any research done related to it. But the issue that can be related with violent video games is high level of aggression in teenagers. “Data showed an increase in aggressive moods or thoughts and hostility after playing violent video games and suggested impairment of prosocial behavior.” (Fournis and Abou).

 

The way aggression can affect an individual varies. One can get so aggressive in nature that he/she reacts everything with an offensive attitude. For example, if someone bumped into another individual, it depends on the individual’s state of mind whether he/she will react to the person with an offensive attack or walk by thinking it was just an accident. (Adachi and Willoughby). This is a short-term effect of violence video games influencing increased level of aggression in an individual.

Now the long-term affect of violent video games. According to the scholarly article ‘The effect of violent video games on aggression: Is it more than just the violence?’, “Each violent video game episode may reinforce the notion that aggression is an effective and appropriate way to deal with conflict and anger” (Adachi and Willoughby). The same article also states that competition in violent games are another factor of causing long term aggression. If a teenager is a heavy gamer and plays games not just for fun but for competitive desire, it is more likely that he/she would suffer through the long-term affect.

The long-term effect grows as the game progresses. The player starts treating everything as if he/she is in the game. They keep on talking about the game with the people around them and this causes them to get competitive with the other players they get to know. As this keeps going on the players start treating other players with their aggressive behavior showing that they are better than them. As the game keeps on progressing the greater the competition and greater the level of aggressiveness in players. This leads to players acting aggressively with other players and trash talking with other people. This eventually proceeds to players treating everybody as their competitors and causing to treat everyone with their aggressive gamer behavior which could sometimes lead to violence against some individuals.

This flow charts views the point that how video games are causing high level of aggression in players. Different characteristics of video games cause a player to view the game and play the game with a different mindset. A player sometimes might get frustrated if a game is too competitive or sometimes the player might get so much into the environment of game that it might even affect his/her heart rate. All these changes internally lead to people having an aggressive behavior towards everything they react to.

Mass Shooting and violent video games

These are some cases where it was found that the person who committed the crime was a first-person shooter gamer.

“On June 10, 2014, armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Jared Padgett, a 15-year-old freshman student, entered Reynolds High School and shot a 14-year old classmate and then himself with the same weapon.” (John Glynn). After looking at his background, it got known that he liked first person shooter games and was heavily interested in weapons (Ed Payne).

“The horrific shooting sprees by frequent violent video game players at Columbine High School in 1999 and Virginia Tech in 2007, as well as the “Beltway” sniper shootings in 2002 led to increased public scrutiny of the effects of violent video game play.” (Adachi and Willoughby). The shooter of the Virginia Tech, Seung-Hui Cho, used to play the game called ‘Counter-Strike’. It is an tactical shooting game where a player is either a terrorist or a counter-terrorist (Winda Benedetti).

All these previous mass shootings in schools and college campuses showing that the shooter was a violent video game player did not lead to any evidence that video games are the main reason why shooters are being created. There have been no study stating or connecting video games directly with school shootings. But there have been several study showing that long term aggression leading to violent behaviors in an individual. According to a study, conducted on students who were in 8th and 9th grade, it is shown that the students who played violent video games as compared to students who did not tend to get in arguments against their teachers frequently and get involved in physical fights often (Adachi and Willoughby). This study proves the point that violent video games are making teenagers extremely violent in nature causing them to fight against other individuals which a teenager who is not exposed to violent video games that much would prefer to talk it out.

Conflicting View Points

There has been some research done which tends to show that there is a negative relationship between violent video games and crime rate. According to John Glynn, “The researchers found that playing games like Grand Theft Auto, for example, had a calming effect on youths, especially those with attention deficit symptoms”. This is trying to state that video games containing violence do not promote aggressive behavior, in fact they tend to establish a peaceful environment to the players while they play the game.

But according to experiments done by DeCamp and J. Ferguson it is shown that how playing violent games establish aggressive thoughts in teenagers that they stop thinking about anything peacefully and answer it with a violent thought. For example, in a study participant were gathered and were let to played either violent or nonviolent video games. After they were done playing they were given a test of filling in the missing words. One of the word that was missing the last two of its alphabets looked like this – ki_ _. The player who played violent video game filled in the blank with double ‘l’ creating the word ‘kill’. While the player who played non-violent video game filled in the blanks with double ‘s’ making the word ‘kiss’. It can be seen from this experiment that the mindset of a violent video game player thinks violently no matter what type of scenario he/she is in.

This proves the argument that there is no relation between violent video games and aggressive behavior wrong. This is not the only study showing that there is a positive relation linking aggressive behavior in a teenager with violent content in a video game. There have been several studies done in this issue in which the majority of them state that there is strong and valid relationship between violent video games and aggressive behavior.

How to stop from getting affected by video games

To prevent teenage kids from getting influenced by violence in video games is upon their elders who are always watching them see play. It could be their parents, their elder siblings, or any other elder who are watching the player play violent video games constantly. This doesn’t mean that video games should be banned completely. Parents should be aware of what type of games their children are playing and how much they are playing. Sometimes children get addicted to playing video games so much that they start ignoring what their parents are telling them to do and this is one of the signs stating to parents that they should start taking some action to prevent their kids to spending all their time on video games. The more time kids spend on video games the more heavily their mind is going to be attached to the content of the video game.

According to the article ‘Violent Video Games Affecting our Children’, “The responsibility for overseeing children’s video game selection and usage clearly lies with caring adults. There is no substitute for close adult supervision and involvement in the lives of children”. The game selection of a video game depends on their parents when they buy their kids a game. While selecting a game for their kids they can look at the back of the box to see some of the visuals the game might contain and also see for what age group the game is made for. These are some of the things a parent should be aware of while buying their kids a game. If a game label says ‘M’ or ‘AO’ this means that the games contain heavy violence scenes and sexual graphics. These are the type of games that you as a parent would not want their children to be playing all day. Even though these are the type of games that are the most popular (Vessey and Lee).

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

DeCamp, Whitney, and Christopher Ferguson. “The Impact of Degree of Exposure to Violent                Video Games, Family Background, and Other Factors on Youth Violence.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, vol. 46, no. 2, 2017, pp. 388–400.

Ferguson, Christopher J. “The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” Journal of Investigative Psychology & Offender Profiling, vol. 5, no.  1/2, Jan.   2008, pp. 25–37. EBSCOhost, ccny- proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=35678191&site=ehost-live.

“Texas lieutenant governor blames abortions, broken families and violent video games for school shootings, but not guns.” CNN Wire, 20 May 2018. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539600299/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=dff597            73. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.

Adachi, and Willoughby. “The Effect of Violent Video Games on Aggression: Is It More than                Just the Violence?” Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 16, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55–62.

Fournis, Gael, and Nidal Nabhan Abou. “Violence, crime, and violent video games: is there a correlation?” Psychiatric Times, Sept. 2014, p. 13. Health Reference Center Academic,              http://link.galegroup.com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A381751979/HRCA?u=cuny_ccny&sid=HRCA&xid=9b57  2095. Accessed 2 Nov. 2018.

Scutti, Susan. “Do Video Games Lead to Violence?” CNN, Cable News Network, 22 Feb. 2018, www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/health/video-games-and-violence/index.html

Glynn, John. “Guns and games: the relationship between violent video games and gun crimes in             America.” Skeptic [Altadena, CA], vol. 21, no. 1, 2016, p. 51+. Academic OneFile, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A448568208/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xi            d=b83455e4. Accessed 28 Oct. 2018.

Benedetti, Winda. “Were Video Games to Blame for Massacre?” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 21 Apr. 2007, www.nbcnews.com/id/18220228/ns/technology_and_science-games/t/were-video-games- blame-massacre/#.W9-VJZNKg2w.

Payne, Ed. “Jared Padgett, Oregon School Shooter, Was in JROTC, ‘Liked’ Gunmakers.” CNN,   Cable News Network, 12 June 2014, www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/justice/oregon-school- shooter/index.html.

Vessey, Judith A., and Joanne E. Lee. “Violent Video Games Affecting our Children.” Pediatric             Nursing, Nov. 2000, p. 607. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A69201160/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=1247969a. Accessed 18 Nov. 2018.

Adachi, and Willoughby.  A model of how video game characteristics might influence aggressive behavior in the short-term. N.d. https://ars-els-cdn-com.ccny- proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/content/image/1-s2.0-S135917891000073X-gr2.jpg. The Effect of Violent Video Games on Aggression: Is It More than Just the Violence?. Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 16, no. 1, 2011, pp. 55–62.