Appel 1

Michael Appel

ENG 1201

Professor Freeland

6 December 2020

Video Game Violence

There are more than 2.7 billion people in the world that play video games daily. In the

United States, over 90% of minors play video games and nine out of ten games rated E10+ or

higher contain some type of violence. The average gamer spends two hours daily just playing

video games, and this prolonged exposure to violent games has consequences. Violence in video

games has a serious negative impact on children, prolonged exposure to violent games causes

aggressive behavior, and prolonged gaming causes kids to become antisocial.

Video games used to not be such a hot topic for the development of children. William

Higinbotham invented the first ever video game, Tennis for Two, in 1958. It was a really

straightforward tennis game that was powered by a large computer, but was only displayed on a

five-inch screen. In 1962 the first home console was created and people were finally able to play

video games from their own home. The games played on these early consoles were very simple

and were mainly just pixels moving around a screen. “Pong”, which was released as an arcade

game in 1972 and as a home video game in 1975, is one of the most notable early video games.

Console gaming has come a long way since those early days, now games are played in high

resolution and can be played on online servers whereas in the past friends could only play

together if they were in the same room. The development of graphics has also led games to be

able to show more details like blood and gore and they allow games to be more interesting and

addicting. These improved visuals make the game seem more realistic and when kids are playing
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these violent games from franchises such as Rockstar games or Activision alone in their room

they get a sense that this is the real world and this is what life is supposed to be like. This causes

major issues with development and social interactions with other kids.

Violence in video games is proven to cause aggressive behavior. Studies show that kids

who are constantly being exposed to violent games show less empathy towards others and are

prone to more aggressive behavior (Howell) . This exposure to violence at a young age can also

lead to criminal activity in the future. Kids that constantly play “Grand Theft Auto”, a game

where you go around a city robbing banks, shooting people, and then run from the cops, start to

think that this is acceptable and it’s okay to shoot someone or rob a bank because all they have to

do is hide from the cops for a few minutes and then they will stop looking for them.

These violent games stimulate aggressive tendencies in the brain and they subdue normal

actions that would normally stop these aggressive behaviors and violent actions from occurring.

The violence reduces the brain's ability to emotionally process information which leads to

aggression and desensitization. When children are repeatedly exposed to this violence an

aggressive personality is formed (King). Our brains develop into our early twenties and

everything we do affects us. Constant exposure to violence without any consequences just wires

our brain to think what we are doing is okay.

The argument is over. Psychologists and neuroscientists have carried out hundreds of

experiments since the 1990s on the violent games and their effects on the brain. Their results

indicate that violent games have a significant influence on actions and classroom success (King).

Laurie D. Berdahl, M.D, said that there is more than 30 years of evidence that indicates that

playing brutal video games contributes to increased aggressive behavior. There has been
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hundreds of studies and decades of testing done on the violence in video games affecting

children with overwhelming evidence that proves violent games have a negative impact on kids.

Another way video games negatively affect kids is by making them antisocial. A meta-

analysis of 130 international studies of more than 130,000 respondents reported that exposure to

violent games increase violent actions, feelings of aggression and hatred, aggressive attitudes,

and minimize feelings of empathy and social behaviors (Ferguson). Studies have proven that

when children sit up in their room all by themselves and play video games for hours on end with

no social interaction at all they decrease social behaviors and become more antisocial and

isolated. Most games do offer an online community that allows people to play with others, but

that does not mean people are communicating and socializing with others in the community, they

are just playing together in the same game. Playing video games for long periods of time takes

time especially as a young kid takes time away from building social skills that are necessary to

survive. Humans are social creatures and need to interact with other humans on a daily basis to

be able to survive and flourish.

People may think that since games have online communities for people to socialize and

play together, people are actually being social and not developing an antisocial personality, but

the opposite is true. In fact, most online communities are very mean and hateful and the online
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chatting is mainly people trash talking one another and insulting each other any way they can.

These toxic communities are filled with teenagers and they are all developing horrible

personality traits. Young kids should not be playing these online games because of all the

harassment that goes on. A lot of parents of younger kids will not even let their kid play online

games so that forces kids to play by themselves and develop antisocial behaviors.

These online games are huge platforms that allow people to bully one another with no

real consequences because most likely they will never see the person they are bullying in real life

and even if they do there will be no way to tell who they are because people use screen names on

games, they don’t use their real name. Until there are actual consequences for these hateful

actions there will always be people insulting one another and saying hateful things that should

never be said. About 8 percent of students reported being bullied at the beginning of the 21st

century. Currently it is normal for 25% of students to experience bullying, and upwards of 50%

of children experience cyberbullying (King). According to another researcher, Carney Bonner,

one in three individuals from the ages of 11 and 17 deals with cyberbullying, and girls are three

times more likely to be cyber-bullied. Bonner explains how bullying does not just go away

either, it follows you around and is constantly haunting you no matter what you do or where you

are (Doucet). Bullying is on a rise and now cyberbullying is even more of an issue.

Not only is it horrible that bullying and cyberbullying is on a rise, but the long term

effects of bullying can damage someone severely. Bullying leads to negative impacts on mental

health such as depression and anxiety. Other mental health effects include increased sadness and

feelings of loneliness, sleeping patterns may start to change, and losing interest in hobbies and

activities that used to be loved. Kids who are bullied are more likely to experience decreased

performance in school, their test scores may start to drop, and just their overall participation in
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school is more likely to drop. Bullying can also lead to drug and alcohol use which can lead to

abuse or an addiction, and the worst outcome of bullying is suicide (StopBullying.gov).

One last way video game violence has a negative impact on children is that it can lead to

criminal activity. A poll was done on teenage boys and it found that 71 percent have played

games like Call Of Duty. The results showed that those teen-age boys are two times as likely to

perform violent actions than teenage boys who have never participated in playing such violent

games like Grand Theft Auto (Thompson). There are several murder cases that are linked to

playing video games obsessively. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who committed the Columbine

shooting in 1999 were obsessed with playing a violent game called “Doom”, which is a killing

simulator that makes killing seem remorseless. Dustin Lynch was charged for first degree murder

in 2002 and was obsessed with playing “Grand Theft Auto III”. In 2003 a teenage boy addicted

to “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” shot two students. He killed one and critically wounded the

other (Thompson). These people were all completely addicted to a video game where violence is

accepted and encouraged. This is awful and games like these need to be monitored in some way.

They should not be allowed to encourage and reward such violence and especially with no way

of giving people a reality check while playing. People get addicted to these games and start to

think that the game is reality and then they go out in the real world and think it is okay to beat

someone up, or worse, murder them.

All of the boys listed above for the murders were teenagers and at the time their brains

were in a crucial part of development. The brain is constantly developing up until the mid-

twenties and it develops certain ways based on what kids learn and what they participate

in(Howell). There have also been multiple medical research institutions that have found teens use

a different part of the brain to process violent images than adults. The part that teenagers process
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violence in is unable to distinguish fantasy from reality and that makes children and teenagers

much more likely to copy something they see in a violent video game than adults who have the

ability to differentiate reality from fantasy (Thompson). Research shows that the brain is in peak

development from ages 8-10, so the images and graphic content that children are exposed to

during those ages has an even greater impact on their lives.

There needs to be a stop to all of this violent gaming. The studies have proven the effects

of violent games, and there are multiple real life examples where the impact that violence in

video games has on people is on full display for the world to see. Jack Flanagan, a London-based

science and technology journalist, said that people need to stop believing mature-rated video

games are not connected to violence in the real world when in fact they are (Flanagan). Flanagan

is correct in this statement and makes a clear point to people that we have to stop putting video

games to the side and ignoring the impacts they have on people while we look for something else

to blame for people becoming desensitized and violent.

Even President Donald Trump has made statements about media violence having such a

negative impact on people. President Trump issued a statement after the shooting in Parkland,

Florida in 2018, and in the statement he talked about how more and more people are realizing

that the games our children are playing are shaping their thoughts and actions. The President also
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made a statement after the Mass shootings of the Oregon District in Dayton, Ohio and the

shooting that took place in a Walmart in El paso, Texas. The President said that the glorification

of violence in our culture must be prevented. This includes the gruesome and horrific video

games that are prevalent in most homes. President Trump has had to deal with multiple shooting

incidents and then for him to speak to the entire country and talk about media and video game

violence being a key contributing factor for these violent actions means that this is a serious

issue. Violent and gruesome games have gone under the radar for too long and it is now more

important than ever to make changes to help better our society.

Clearly change is needed, but just shutting down these massive video game companies

isn’t a viable solution. The gaming industry is projected to produce $159.3 billion dollars in

revenue in 2020 and it is projected that by 2023 the industry will surpass $200 billion dollars in

revenue. Video game developers like Rockstar games, the creators of Grand Theft Auto, have a

net worth of over $3.5 billion. Activision, the creators of the Call Of Duty franchise is worth

over $62.13 billion dollars. These massive video game developers have thousands of employees

also and just shutting the companies down would not work, there is too much money that would

be lost if they were just shut down.

One gaming company that has started to sell violence to kids in a more subtle way is Epic

Games. They created the game Fortnite, a battle royale game mode where one-hundred players

all land on a map and fight to be the last one standing, in 2017 and it has exploded in popularity

ever since. A huge issue with the game however, is how appealing to younger kids it is. The

game features a lot of bright colors and is on more of the cartoonish side, unlike games like Call

of Duty which are made to be ultra realistic in every way possible. Fortnite has attracted young

kids to play their game and these kids are enjoying the game more than ever which is very
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frightening. These kids are enjoying running around and “eliminating” other players with

weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Epic Games has done a good job with

keeping the violence to as little as possible, in Fortnite when a player is eliminated their body

just turns to pixels and vanishes, there is no blood or gore shown at all. Although Epic Games

has kept the violence to a minimum there is still violence in the game and these kids are playing

the game for hours on end with a goal of eliminating all other players. This is detrimental to

them and it needs to stop.

It is awful that young children and even teens will get their hands on these mature-rated

games with lots of violence. Younger kids will beg their parents for days until they give in, and

some parents will eventually give in and buy the game for their kid. In the middle school setting

60% of boys and 40% of girls that have played a mature-rated game before have physically hurt

someone (Gentile). This shows that m-rated video games are reaching out and hooking kids early

in life, and in turn these kids are going around hitting other kids because that is what these games

teach them to do. Also, these violent video games encourage kids to commit crimes and be

violent, because by doing so they get rewarded by advancing to later levels or unlocking

something that they can use in the game. Studies indicate that when aggression in video games is

rewarded, players display increased violent conduct relative to video game players where

violence is punished (Dietz).

Even with all the information and studies that show video game violence has a negative

impact on children, there is still a large group of people that do not think video games affect

children. Christopher J. Ferguson is in that group of people and in his article , “Video Games

Have Become a Scapegoat for Violent Behavior.” He explains how nearly all kids play video

games and at some point they have played a violent game so it is easy to link a violent crime to
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playing video games. In one statement Ferguson explicitly says, "I likewise place that huge

numbers of us want to accuse others, or a theoretical element, for example, the media, for our

issues as opposed to acknowledging moral obligation when we or our children carry on gravely."

The argument is that people have become so sensitive when it comes to violent actions and do

not want to just own up to the situation, and instead they look for a possible scapegoat to blame

the problem on.

A longitudinal research was carried out and the findings showed that characteristics of

antisocial personality, depressive symptoms, family violence exposure, and peer influence all

predicted aggression and violence over a 3-year period, but not exposure to violent video games

(Games Can Be Good). There have been studies that show little connection between violent

games and aggressive behaviors, but there is over 30 years worth of studies that have proved

video games lead to increased aggression. These arguments against violence in video games

affecting children are very biased and they just try to throw shade at those that have actual

evidence. Ferguson argues that media concerns block us from seeing things that could be actual

contributors to violence, particularly violence in families. This is just not true. Violence in

families is not being neglected. Dylan Klebold was one of the Columbine shooters and his

mother, Sue Klebold said she did not know that Dylan was depressed or suicidal. She said he

seemed to be moody or irritable sometimes but she thought Dylan was just a normal teenager at

the time. There was no home violence in this situation. Sue loved her son and wanted the best for

him. She never knew about his issues because he was always in his room on his computer

playing video games, which just spurred him on even more to shoot and kill his classmates.

Violence in video games has a serious negative impact on children, prolonged exposure

to violent games causes aggressive behavior, and prolonged gaming causes kids to become
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antisocial. More than 30 years of research has been carried out that shows that excessive playing

of violent games induces increased violence and a lack of empathy towards others. Studies have

found that children who play brutal video games show more aggression than children who play

kid friendly games. Such research shows that violence in video games would not lead all children

to become mass killers, but constantly being exposed to violence can cause other problems such

as depression, reduced empathy for other people, and prolonged fear (Howell). The long-term

influence of violent games on the aggressiveness of people against others has been shown to be

greater than the effects of poverty and childhood abuse. (King).Real-world violence is

synonymous with violent video games, and we should avoid pretending otherwise"(Flanagan).
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