The apparent issue of video games and violence

If newspapers are anything to go by, games will rot your brain, make you fat and lazy, give you cancer and make you want to kill people. Now we as gamers know that this is simply hysteria, but it seems that the idea that video games could alter your mental state that much is becoming much more mainstream.

In recent incidents such as school shootings, the fact that the perpetrator owned video games seems much more significant than anything else that may have happened in their lives. It seems that games are becoming a scapegoat for these incidents because the media feels that they are an easy target. Even President Obama has requested more research into the effects of videogame violence on young minds.

Many parents now also seem to believe that video games make children more aggressive and more prone to commit violent acts in the future. Yet violence has been around long before video games and we as humans have found difference ways to express it.  For example, children playing with toys such as Action Man, Power Rangers and even water guns are an outlet for it, but these are not considered harmful. Then of course we have music and movies, which are not considered harmful because they are non-interactive.

Looking at games themselves  – when you kill someone in a game, you know there are no real life consequences. You know that person doesn’t really die and you know you won’t really go to prison (unless you’re playing Skyrim or something). I have been gaming and playing violent games since a very young age, and yet I’ve never had any desire to pick up a gun and shoot someone (albeit a little more difficult in the UK).  Which in fact makes me more certain that games are actually being used as a scapegoat for gun control problems.

So is there a solution for this? No, because in my opinion there isn’t a problem. Numerous amount of research has actually shown that videogames REDUCE violence and crime and can actually help with stress relief (which I am personally happy to vouch for). The only thing that needs to change is that parents need to take more responsibility for their childrens behaviour and stop looking for easy answers.