L-veotz
Member
Blog Archive
Blog
Video Games = Violence? 1 Comments
The More I think about it the more I realize how contradictory our society is. It seems that people out there can't wait to fill heads with the notion of how the civilized world is deteriorating because of insignificant things. One of the cases is the correlation between violent video game play and agression. If I have to hear another example of how the media is erasing morals and bringing the world's youth with it, I'm going to puke.
I know I've continuously heard of all those anti-violent video game legislations and persuasions. Everyone seems to be able to possitively correlate video game play and a rise in aggression levels. But couldn't you do the same thing and substitute water? How are we to say that aggression levels in teenagers have drastically risen in the past so many years without being able to go back in time and reconstruct the same experiments? Who says it hasn't been like this forever?
Although I can completely understand the negative hype about the increased violence in games and the increased realism, that doesn't mean that everyone is going to go and start shooting one another. If that were so than just about everyone reading this would by now be guilty of murder. How then do people come up with there hypothesis?
Many people out there assume that just because someone is playing a violent game (reguardless of difficulty in game play or prior negative experiences during the day) and after game play portrays "raised" aggression that the game is at fault. God knows that it couldn't have possibly been all of those pesky spectators watching you play the game, how uncomfortable all the equipment was that was set up to observe, how bad your day had been, or maybe that you really just can't stand having to answer "And how would you rate your aggression now?" one more time.
I wonder to myself if there have been people who have studied the aggression levels of people who have never been introduced to a violent game, or even those who solely play real-life violent games (ie: football, rugby, wrestling). Do you think that many people worry about letting their children join the sports team because it may increase their aggression levels and possibly lead to their child causing intentional harm to another person? Hell no! Why then do video games receive all of this attention? Because there is, like always, the need for a scapegoat--an answer to why there is so much violence in the world. An answer to why children bring guns into schools. Why people can so savagely harm one another without remorse. And that cause must be this growing trend of violent games. Right?
No one bothers to note that crime has gone down, that less and less people are commiting murder.
[If you were going to say that violent video games were the cause for raised aggression and violent crime among adolescents because nearly every person to commit a violent crime has played a violent video game, then you might as well say that air itself is the cause of any type of crime. We all know that every criminal (violent or not) has breathed air, and thus air must be the cause.]
/end rant
I know I've continuously heard of all those anti-violent video game legislations and persuasions. Everyone seems to be able to possitively correlate video game play and a rise in aggression levels. But couldn't you do the same thing and substitute water? How are we to say that aggression levels in teenagers have drastically risen in the past so many years without being able to go back in time and reconstruct the same experiments? Who says it hasn't been like this forever?
Although I can completely understand the negative hype about the increased violence in games and the increased realism, that doesn't mean that everyone is going to go and start shooting one another. If that were so than just about everyone reading this would by now be guilty of murder. How then do people come up with there hypothesis?
Many people out there assume that just because someone is playing a violent game (reguardless of difficulty in game play or prior negative experiences during the day) and after game play portrays "raised" aggression that the game is at fault. God knows that it couldn't have possibly been all of those pesky spectators watching you play the game, how uncomfortable all the equipment was that was set up to observe, how bad your day had been, or maybe that you really just can't stand having to answer "And how would you rate your aggression now?" one more time.
I wonder to myself if there have been people who have studied the aggression levels of people who have never been introduced to a violent game, or even those who solely play real-life violent games (ie: football, rugby, wrestling). Do you think that many people worry about letting their children join the sports team because it may increase their aggression levels and possibly lead to their child causing intentional harm to another person? Hell no! Why then do video games receive all of this attention? Because there is, like always, the need for a scapegoat--an answer to why there is so much violence in the world. An answer to why children bring guns into schools. Why people can so savagely harm one another without remorse. And that cause must be this growing trend of violent games. Right?
No one bothers to note that crime has gone down, that less and less people are commiting murder.
[If you were going to say that violent video games were the cause for raised aggression and violent crime among adolescents because nearly every person to commit a violent crime has played a violent video game, then you might as well say that air itself is the cause of any type of crime. We all know that every criminal (violent or not) has breathed air, and thus air must be the cause.]
/end rant
I agree V. - Aggression in inherent, it comes out in a many different violent forms of social interaction. Its a part of belonging to the human species.