this is an essay i just wrote for a class, its about how videogames don't cause children to become violent. if you don't care about this type of stuff then don't read it.

Videogame Violence

            Videogames don’t make violent children. Throughout history children have done violent things and people have blamed those violent things on videogames. Videogames have been said to cause violent behavior in children, I will prove that they don’t. There are many different things to talk about but here are three big ones, school shootings, bad or false research, and the actual risks of playing violent videogames.

            There have been many school shootings in the past few years and they seem to be more and more recent. Columbine the DC sniper and Virginia tech shootings were all blamed, by the media on videogames. None of it is true though, videogames had nothing to do with any of the shootings. The FBI said it was not videogames that caused the shootings at columbine” An FBI investigation concluded that Klebold was significantly depressed and suicidal, and Harris was a sociopath” (1, Pg.8). The DC sniper used paper plate painted like heads to practice, not the game Halo like the news papers said. Also the FBI found that the Virginia tech shooter played no video at all. So the shootings have been wrongly blamed on videogames.

            There have been many studies showing that videogames cause violence in children and these studies are just not true. The news agencies and government spokes people use these false and irrational studies to change people’s minds about videogames.  In one major study college students were asked to participate in the study were “ they play a violent or nonviolent game for 15-20 minutes and then blow an air-horn or give a small electric shock to somebody in another room” (2). This is crazy and doesn’t make sense, but this is used by many people as the basis of their argument that videogames are bad. An air-horn is a very bad measure of real world violence.

            Many people have said it is more of a risk to play videogames than it is to not. “High levels of violent videogame exposure have been linked to delinquency and fighting at school” (3). This is the result of a bad study. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson did a $1.5 million study and found that “ boys and girls who play 15 hours of exclusively violent videogames were more prone to be in trouble at school, but boys are also more violent when they don’t play any videogames at all” (4). Higher risk doesn’t mean they are going to get into trouble, I play a huge amount of M rated videogames and I haven’t been in any sort of trouble since the 5^th grade.

            So videogames don’t cause violent behavior in children. The shootings were not caused by game violence, and the studies that say they do cause child violence don’t make any sense. Although playing videogames can cause a higher risk of violence there is an even higher risk they don’t play any video games at all. So the media should stop blaming every violent act on videogames and parents should let their kids play videogame but just keep a watchful eye on the amount of playing and violence.