Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Alex Elkins
Brenna Sherrill
ENG 100
18 April 2016
From the time I was in 6th grade, and still to this day I have had a love and passion
for playing video games. From every single Call of Duty game ever created, all of the
Halo games, and just about any other game you could think of, I have played them. It
really gets me going when people say that video games make people more violent,
because from personal experience I dont believe that they do. Although they can make
you very angry at times, that anger does not carry out into your lives outside the video
game world. But because of my huge interest in video games, and I hate to do this but I
plan on explaining in detail the research on how video games do make people more
violent.
Although there are cases where people say that video games dont make people more
violent, there is also a lot more information on how they do make people more violent.
There are many sources that have published stories about this topic, most of them I found
on the WKU databases and some I just found looking on Google. Most of the sources I
found were journals from reporters for big news stations, and I found one that was written
The most popular case proving that violent video games make people more violent
are the many school shootings that have happened in past years. For exapmle, the Sandy
Hook shooting in 2012 or the 2011 shooting in Norway are 2 cases that people believe
Elkins 2
that violent video games are the cause of their aggression. In a recent event, a father
walked in on his 14 year old son killing his family, and the father had to kill his son in
self defense by bludgeoning him 52 times with a tire iron. The researcher of the case
testified that the teen had recently been exposed to aggression and violence, including in
the statement that the boy had been playing a violent video game called Mortal Kombat
Although many people assume that video games are the cause to the violence, most
of the time officials cannot prove that is the real reason why. In the case where the father
walked in on his son murdering his family, the researcher of the case had to sit on the
stand and hear from the judge that he failed to provide enough evidence to prove that this
homicide was caused by the son playing Mortal Kombat. Even the school shootings could
not provide enough evidence that the shooters aggression was caused by video games. It
is very hard for people to actually prove this argument about video games. I am a video
game fanatic and its hard for me to believe that my aggression I have is built up from me
An article from CNN says that about 90 percent of kids ages 8 to 16 play video
games for about 13 hours a week, and in this article it says that playing violent video
games did cause violence in the kids around that age. It also says that kids in the U.S. and
Japan who reported playing violent video games for a good amount of time had more
aggression built up in them for months than their peers who had not been playing video
games.
There are two ways that researchers say spark the violent actions from video games.
The first is Imitation, which means children who watch violent video games think that
Elkins 3
video games portray what the real world is like and that makes them believe that acting
aggressively is the ok way to deal with the outside world. It is proven that if you are
exposed to violence daily that it effects your mind, it makes you think that doing the
things in these video games is ok, and it messes with you mentally and emotionally. Once
your mind is set that it is alright to partake in these violent acts, your mind constantly
wants to be doing something bad or you do not feel satisfied. I have recently been
watching Criminal Minds, and it amazes watching every episode. The people who do
these violent things are not human, they are sick, they will not stop until they are
Have you ever wondered why someone shot up the Virginia Tech campus? A man
shot dozens of people dead in cold blood, just because he had been playing a very popular
first person shooter game on PC called Counter Strike. I have personally played a lot of
counter strike and I am still in shock that they blamed this shooting on this game. The
shooter had to have many other things wrong with him to cause his actions, and although
its hard for me to believe, but in this case it is true, video games caused this man to
In conclusion, as a gamer, I hate writing a paper in the perspective that video games
do cause violence, but it is true. Although there are very many cases proving that there is
not nearly enough evidence to prove that video games do cause violence, you have to
look at the bigger picture. All of the shootings that have happened in recent years,
excluding a few, were caused by men who exposed themselves to an excessive amount of
violence in video games, and I truly believe that is the cause of their actions.
Elkins 4
Works Cited
Benedetti, Winda. "Were Video Games to Blame for Massacre?" Msnbc.com. , 21 Apr. 2007. Web. 28
Apr. 2016
-This article by Benedetti provided me the information about the case where a father walked in
on his son murdering his family, and the father had to kill the son in self defense.
Casey, Michael. "Do Violent Video Games Lead to Criminal Behavior." CBS News, 17
Aug. 2015.
- Caseys entry talks about how people instantly believe that whenever there is a
mass shooting, violent video games are a key factor for the shooters rage. Later the story
states that there is not enough evidence to prove that video games contributed to the rage.
Ferguson, Christopher. "Is Video Game Violence Bad." 1 May 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2016
- This article provided information about the Virginia Tech shooting that happened a few years
ago.
Harding, Anne. "Violent Video Games Linked To Child Aggression." CNN. Cable News Network,
- In this article, Anne Harding provided me with statistics proving that video games do cause
violence in teens.
Markey, Patrick M., Charolette N. Markey, and Juliana E. French. "Violent Video Games and Real-
- This group of writers, who just so happen to be majors in the Psychology field, wrote this article
about how we need to control the use of violence to help protect our society from harm.
Toppo, Greg. "How Violent Video Games Really Affect Kids." EBSCO Host, July-Aug. 2015.
Elkins 5
- Toppos article talks about how students from Universities in Germany conducted experiments
with video games to see the aftereffects of violent video games. They conducted experiments with a