Do Violent Video Games Cause Behavior Problems
In today's society there is a constant and seemingly endless debate as to whether or not violence in video games cause in an increase in aggression and violent actions in individuals. With a question such as this would it not be easy to just say yes video games do cause violent actions in individuals or no, they don't? Today I will have an attempt to take an objective look at both sides within “Do violent video games cause behavior problemsD essay. Lots of politicians do believe that the main cause of violent actions (shootings in this instance) is as a result of people playing violent video games in their youth 'priming' them for violence. Former U.S.A president is one of these people as he believes that violent video games ”glorify violence'.
Its because of people in power like this that has caused a large number of people all over the world that violent actions in individuals are indeed caused by increased violence in video games. As a result of this, the majority of the time the media paints a bad picture for video games whenever there's a tragic event by a lone individual saying that playing violent video games have taught him that violence is acceptable. While in some cases this may be correct in the majority of cases it isn't, and the media don't seem to take into account other external factors that may have caused the person to do what they did. With increasing research as to whether or not video games do cause violent actions it appears that the amount of blame video games is getting from the media is reducing as people are starting to realise that correlation doesn't always equal causation. As previously mentioned, when Donald trump was talking about video games 'glorifying violence', when refiring to the El Paso Texas shooting, caused huge change in opinions and people starting to believe that video games do cause violence again; showing just how shrouded this topic is that people aren't set on their opinions and are easily swayed.
As the discussion grows more and more people weigh in with their opinions without looking at any facts or research, due to a lack of it. As a result, many scientists have investigated whether violent video games cause an increase in violent actions in individuals; and if there is correlation between the two, does it equal causation. To do this they look at other factors surrounding video games rather than just violence levels as this will help them make a judgement as to whether the correlation does in fact equal causation or if it was the other factors rather than an increase in violence.
Evidence That Violent Video Games Don't Cause an Increase in Violence
This first graph suggests that violent video games don't cause an increase in violence in individuals, as the sales in video games between 1998 and 2015 increase from around 7 billion a year to around 16 billion, whereas the violent crime decrease from 575 violent crimes per 100 thousand people (in the USA) to only 360 per 100 thousand people in 2014. This suggests that they don't cause an increase in violence in individuals as if they did cause an increase in violence then it would be highly likely that would have been a large increase in violent crimes per 100 thousand people rather than a large decrease.
The bar graph shows the sales of Grand theft auto 5(GTAV), which is often critiqued for being extremely violent and consider a violent game and unsuitable for young children by the community, between the years 2013 and 2020. The trend in sales shows that there was a peak in sales when it was first released in 2013 with it declining and reaching a minimum in 2018 before having an increase in 2019. However, when we compare this to a graph of violent crimes committed in the United States of America from 2013 to 2017 it shows that the amount of crime in 2017 is much greater than the number of crimes committed in 2013 suggesting that there isnât any causal relationship between violent video games and an increase in violence actions in individuals.
In a study conducted by Joseph Hilgard of Illinois state university , in 2019, he found that it was the difficulty level of the video game rather than the violent content that caused the increased violence in the individual. They started off writing about their thoughts on abortion and then were given a fake essay that contradicted their views to mark, to provoke them. They each then played an altered version of DOOM II with different levels of violence and different difficulties with the main story staying the same. After 15 minutes of playing, they then got given their essay back, marked by the research team with provocative comments. They were partnered with someone with opposing views and were told they marked their essay, before performing a task and deciding how long their partner would be submerged in water for. From the 275 participants no data was shown to suggest that the players of the more violent or difficult game exposed their partner to the water for longer. This shows that video games don't cause an increase in violent actions in individuals as the data showed that the violence and difficulty didn't change the subjects' decisions making when playing video games. It allows us to see the effect of playing video games of different difficulties on peoples occupied mind as they were focusing on completing the task rather than how long their partner was in the water for. Further showing that video games don't cause an increase in violent actions as if violent video games did then the participants would have been more likely to focus on how long their partner was in the water for rather than the task they were given to do. This is also supported by a study conducted by researchers at Oxford University and the University of Rochester in which they found that participants got more annoyed when they were unable to master a games control regardless of the content. This shows that violent video games don't cause an increase in aggression as the content didn't affect how much more violent or annoyed they got, which shows that people have care more about their ability to master a new game rather than whether or not they are committing acts of violence.
One of the main arguments people use for saying that video games do cause violence is that the 'prime' our minds. Priming is when we see something repeatedly making us desensitized from repeated exposure. People say that the exposure to violence in video games is “priming” us for violence later in life. In a study conducted by York university in 2018 they found that video games don't prime us to perform in a certain way and the realism of violence in the video games doesn't necessarily increase how violent the content is, for example a cartoon game that doesn't obey the laws of physics could be considered more violent than a hyper realistic game with similar content is the cartoon game has more blood and gore. So just because is a game is very realistic doesn't mean that if games did prime us that it would prime us any better. To test whether priming worked or not they got participants label pictures as either an animal or vehicle then played a game where they either had to avoid being eaten by a cat or avoid crashing in a car. The research team found that the participants who played the car weren't any quicker at identifying vehicles after playing and the participants who avoided being eaten by different animals weren't any quicker at identifying animals after playing, in some extreme cases their reaction time was even slower. This shows that priming doesn't exist as if it did the reaction times would have just got quicker and quicker the more, they played the game and the more they practised identifying animals and vehicles, therefore any correlation between violence and video games due to priming has no causation as the study shows that priming doesn't insensitive us to the violence and this suggests that people have made up “priming” to fit their narrative of how violent video games are bad for us and that we need stop playing them.
Evidence That Violent Video Games Do Cause an Increase in Violence
The bar graph that shows the video games sales from 2011 to 2020 has similar trends to the violent crimes graph from 2011 to 2018. The violent crimes chart starts off decreasing from 2011 to 2013 whereas the video game sales increase straight from 2011 and continues to increase until 2018 where it decreased a bit in 2019 then massively increased from 2019 to 2020. The violent crime then massively increases from 2013 to 2018 matching the trends of video games showing that there is correlation between violent crime and video games suggesting that video games may cause an increase in violence in individuals if there is also causation. This could be a result of people modelling themselves off video game characters and wanting to copy what they see in games. A study conducted by Justin H. Chang and Brad J. Bushman hypothesised that children would mimic what they saw whilst playing or watching video games, they also hypothesised that the more relatable a character is the more likely a child is to model their behaviour. To test this, they had children either watch or play video games for 20 minutes, from one of three levels of violence no violence, sword violence or gun violence. They then had them go into a room with a disabled firearm in cupboard to play 220 out 242 participants found the gun with 120 who found the gun touching it. 62% of the people who watched gun violence then touched the gun showing that video games may cause violence as younger people will look up to the people, they see it games and see them as role models and think that because they are violent in the games itâs alright to be violent in real life. This will cause a large proportion of the next generation to have an increased aggression levels as they will grow up seeing people in violent video games as role models increasing their violent actions, potentially influencing generations to come for a long time as its more likely that they will allow their children to do similar things they did when they were growing up.
In 2018 Tobias Greitemeyer released an article on how video games can not only affect the people who play but friends and family of them, he decided to investigate this as Christakis and Fowler found that people are 57% more likely to become obese if they know someone who is obese. His initial findings were that playing violent video games led to an increase in violent thoughts and the more you play the games the more you have these thoughts and the more likely you are to act out on them. This suggest that video games do cause violence as even if you just play them in small amounts, you will eventually end up becoming more violent than if you didn't play the game in the first place, suggesting that violent video games cause increased levels of violence when played in any capacity. He then found that the these “violent thoughts can also spread through friend groups and affect people who don't play these video games”. This shows just how contagious the violent thoughts are that they can spread like a communicable disease to people who don't play video game. This shows that they cause an increase in violence as they have such a large influence on the people who do play that when they then go and meet up with friends who donât play that it builds up and starts to have a negative effect on them and cause them to have violent thoughts and may cause them to act on these thoughts. He used the graph shown below to visualize his results. As we can see the people with high violent video game participation were higher than the lower violent video games participants.
Despite this there is a greater increase in aggressive behaviour for people who don't play violent video games from having friends who don't play violent video game to having friends who do play violent video games. This shows the spreading effect that playing violent video games have on people and how they can cause people to have more violent actions. The study has clear correlation between exposure to violent video games and an increase in aggression and violence, but correlation doesn't always mean that there is causation between the two topics. The fact that people can be affected without playing them does show how much of problem violent video games have become and why we need to clamp down on how easy it is to access any content people want now a days.
In November of this year Dr Suziedelyte published a paper on the effects of violent video games on people by testing two things the first being aggression against other and the second being the destruction of property
If Video Games Do Cause an Increase in Violent Actions, Then Why Aren't They Harder to Buy?
The main problem with trying to restrict the purchasing of video games is that in today's society everything can be bought online and it's hard to get a solid proof of identification to make sure that the game is being sold to a member of the intended audience. Even if governments and corporations could find a way to ensure that only the intended target audience bought it, they would still have the massive issue of illegal downloading and the fact of how vast the internet has become is that it's almost impossible to keep up with everything going on and clamp down on it to ensure that people don't have access to things they shouldn't have access to. This would ensure that the amount of violent video games people are exposed to is reduced resulting in less violent actions in individuals.
A lot of governments have tried to restrict people access to games containing violent content but, for instance the Chinese government have tried to reduce the violence in their country by only allowing children to play online video games between 20:00 and 21:00 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. While this will reduce the amount of violence they are exposed to and in turn reducing their aggression levels and violent thoughts it won't entirely reduce irradicate it as they are still being exposed to it through other forms of media like watching streamers and youtubers play similar games to them and will talk about it with their friends. In fact, this ban could cause an increase in violence in individuals as they may indulge themselves in more violent and unsuitable forms of media that could skew any results for any studies conducted in china.
Conclusion
In conclusion the arguments for and against the fact that violent video games cause an increase in violent actions in individuals both have lots of validity, but I believe that when played by the intended audience violent video games don't cause an increase in violence actions as a lot of the research against the fact was done using children suggesting that the violent video games aren't suitable for the younger audiences and that the creators of the games have given considerable thought to the rating of the game and what they have given it should be listened to. Despite this people play games that they aren't mature enough to play and then that's where people get the storyline that violent video games cause violence and suggest that we should ban all games rather than preventing their children from playing games of which they aren't mature enough to play yet.
The effects of violent video games on individuals may differ in different countries around the world as there could be other factors that affect the results of any studies like laws (e.g., the ban on video games during the week in china) or maturity of people playing the games as the more mature someone is the less likely they are to be affected by violence in video games so some countries could be more mature than others so any research done there may only reflect that country rather the a general consensus for the world. Similarly with graphs just because there appears to be correlation between some graphs doesn't necessarily mean there is a casual link between them as there could be other external influencing factor.
