Gun violence. Everyone agrees that it's horrible and is occurring far more frequently than in the recent past. This understandably has made gun control a popular topic of discussion and a prime concern for public officials. Many ideas and plans have been proposed to curb gun violence. Some are more practical than others, some are quite drastic, and then there are a few that simply don't make sense to me. One such proposal is that video games have made today's youth more violent and dangerous. It's an idea that's risen up before, and always ends up getting nowhere. Either way it's here again to make the parents of teenagers second guess getting their child that new video game which is of course rated M (for mature) like the vast majority of popular games are today.
Only this time, the proposal was made by the president, and the work and research is being done through Congress. Now as an owner of many violent video games you might think I'm worried that Congress is launching a formal investigation into the effects my favorite pastime may have on the youth of our nation. In reality it's completely the opposite. Congress leading this investigation means the investigation will be very thorough and that it will uncover anything and everything that there is to find on the subject. I believe that when they get to the bottom of the typical male American's true favorite past time they'll discover that it's just that, a past time and a way to have fun with friends and family. Then maybe the next time someone tries bringing this up, or banning video games even (which has been tried before) they'll see that there was already research done on the subject and come to the simple conclusion that if the United States government couldn't prove video games have a bad affect on human behavior, then their private investigator certainly won't be able to either.
These are simply my own thoughts though. Maybe it'll be discovered that playing violent video games changes something deep in the recesses of our complex brains and it actually is a contributing factor to all the violence we've been seeing lately. But I doubt it. Please though, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below.
http://m.usatoday.com/article/tech/gaming/1839879
I think people are wasting their time trying to find a connection between virtual violence and actual violence. I agree with you; people who play these games do it as a pastime and to have fun. They are not playing with the intention of learning how to be violent so that they can in turn be violent themselves. I do not think that playing these violent video games actually causes people to go out and commit random acts of violence. A person who watches MMA fighting on tv does not go out into the street and use that fighting style on the first passerby soccer mom they see. Those people who do things like that usually have another problem in their life that is perhaps more directly related to the violence. In short, I think the government should stop focusing on this "problem" that is not really there and go put their attention towards bigger problems like national debt or other things.
ReplyDeleteAll of the people who have committed these acts have all had one thing in common- a mental illness. Video games are not the problem, not recognizing mental illnesses soon enough is the problem
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