Ah, video games. I’ve played games for most of my life. In hindsight it probably wasn’t too healthy on the eyes, but I’d like to say it was one of the most memorable aspects of my childhood. I wouldn’t say that I’m a ~gamer~ but I still play games, a lot of them, and as our technology advances so do the games released on the many different platforms.
Games that some of us played at younger ages like Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil etc. were seemingly harmless on our psyche, but in society today people have been linking violent behaviour to video games.
It’s a generally divided topic – some think it’s not the video game that incites violent behaviour but it’s actually based on the individual as well as the ‘systematic’ issues they face, while others believe video games are not only to blame for some of the horrors that are committed today but the easiness of obtaining said games, as well as weapons (e.g. guns, knives etc.)
Following mass shootings in America (El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, to name a few) that claimed over 31 lives, Donald Trump said that “gruesome and grisly video games” contributed to the “glorification of violence in our society”.
Following these horrific events, Lieutenant governor of Texas Dan Patrick, said:
“The gaming industry teaches young people to kill.”
Video games have been blamed for affecting young minds for quite some time, with violent games in particular being implicated in US mass shootings (Columbine in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook in 2012). Following Trump’s statement, the hashtag #VideoGamesAreNotToBlame began trending in response.
On one hand, it would be incorrect to say that video games do not have a negative effect on us, especially as impressionable teens/young adults. As previously mentioned, the games being produced as technology increases are only becoming more and more realistic – games featuring gore such as Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat feature body mutilating and organ-rupturing fatalities. One of the biggest games to come under fire has been the Grand Theft Auto series, which has been criticised for its features such as stealing, murdering, mowing down innocent pedestrians, going to strip clubs and picking up prostitutes. While most of these games do have an age limit for players (as, legally, they should), this hasn’t stopped children and young adults from indulging (including myself).
A mother of 2, who would like to be kept anonymous, reached out over social media to talk about her opinion on this subject.
“My eldest son is 13, all he does at the moment is play games online with his friends. Pretty grown up games. I think Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty. Normally I wouldn’t think too much of it, but I’ve noticed a change in his attitude and behaviour. He’s a lot more antisocial and short-tempered.”
Another person reached out to talk about his opinion of this subject.
“It desensitises us to gore and violence because the thought of firing a gun or taking a life seems so easy to picture. Then these broken kids go out, do it in real life and these game developers have got to make the next game more violent so it keeps us invested. Gang members went from small pocketknives to samurai swords. It’s obviously the games.”
On the other hand, looking it from a literal sense it is unlikely that videogames are a direct cause for violence in young people. Several recent studies have found no recent or apparent connection between violent games and aggressive behaviour in teens/young adults.
In fact, it can be suggested that games are blamed because they’re an easy target. Looking at this drawn out argument, they’ve constantly been used as a scapegoat which actually distracts from the bigger picture – nobody wants to talk about the systematic causes of youth violence, because it’s easier to shift the blame on virtual guns rather than make any real life changes to the prevalence of real guns.
According to James Ivory, professor and research director at Virginia Tech;
“The public doesn’t always blame crime on video games — but they are eight times more likely to do so when the perpetrator of a crime is white. White people don’t play video games more than people of colour.” – with this quote, he then went on to suggest that bringing up video games in discussions about white criminal may be using them as a pretty transparent excuse.
So, do video games incite violent behaviour? Are they the cause for mass shootings, or are we?
I conducted a small poll asking the question ‘Do you think video games affect your behaviour? If so, why?’. This was open to the age group affected the most in question (ages 16-25), and the results were interesting – it appears there is an even divide between whether or not it affects their behaviour. Out of 16 people, 50% agreed that video games affect their behaviour, while 50% think that they don’t affect their behaviour.
Video games are generally created to adhere to a demand – there are millions of players who love gore and violence. Most people may consider this as weird or worrying but for a lot of people these types of games can be an outlet for inner aggression and darker desires, to do things we might not necessarily be able to do in real life that we can in the fantasy world developers make for us.
Media, including video games, have no direct link to violent crime. In an interview with CBS, professor James Ivory says:
“I think its morally ok to have a problem with celebrating violence. It’s even ok to say maybe playing video games a lot does something to you, but it definitely does not make you a mass shooter. There are other things that affect that.”
In actuality, it’s difficult to pin the blame on either side of the argument. There is an evident link between the way that video games affect or have affected the behaviours of teens and young adults; they promote antisocialism, change behaviours and cause desensitisation towards violence and gore. However, there is inconclusive evidence to prove they are the direct reasoning for violence and shootings in teens & young adults, and what there IS evidence for is that scapegoating is easier to accept the fact that societal issues may also contribute to the problem.