When it
comes to videogames, people and governments tend to say that they are a
vivid source of violence, and games are blamed for shootings and killings that
sometimes shake their countries. Moreover, the media and many research studies
have eagerly shown how violent videogames are and how they are responsible of
such accidents. Would you dare to contradict them?
Well, I
would. The problem with the media and the governments in general is that they seem
to need an entity on which they can blame for any negative event that produces
fear. Noticeably, in developed countries, shootings happen every now and then,
and since the media and the government do not know why those events happen,
they blame videogames because of trivial details like “investigations on the
killers showed that they played games on a daily basis.” But, does that mean
that videogames are the reason why these murderers commit their crimes?
To support
such statements, researches on videogames and violence are commonly carried out
to verify the connection. However, the results are somewhat shaky because they
do not show the link between playing videogames and those terrible outcomes. Moreover,
several other elements are not taken into account such as family violence and
mental illnesses.
All in all,
the non-existent connection between videogames and violence is commonly used by
the media and the governments to overlook the real problem behind the mortal incidents,
which may refer to a society that every day becomes more and more dehumanizing; and researchers are not responsible either, for they are not
consistent with their results.
I agree with you my eye candy, governments tend to avoid their own responsibilities in order not to solve the real problem behind violence: poverty, drug addiction, and family problems in general. Anyway, you should come to terms with the explicit violence that videogames expose children to. Of course, it has a strong impact on them. Maybe they would not kill neither a mosquito by playing video games, but it may alter their normal behaviour in a negative way.
ReplyDeleteAs you have been stating about the non-sense to how governments blame videos games of sociey problems as a false statement, yes I agree with you. I can tell you from my own experience I've grown up playing video games (most of them really violent) and they didn't cause me any mental or behaviour disorder. The problem lies on all the other in elements that might have affected those people (family problems, bullying, etc.) In addition, some researches support playing videos as a way to improve your body reflects. However as Osvaldo said, some video games for little kids could cause some misbehaviour because of the “elicit violence”.
ReplyDeleteI believed that the parents have a big responsability in what their children are playing with. If the parents don't teach their children any differences between games and real life, this could lead that little kids may have another perception about what is good or bad, or what is real or fiction. I know about many cases of children who have played violent games since they were little kids, and that has become them violent with other children. I assumed that video games come with an age range specification for a reason.
ReplyDeleteExactly, Camila. Parents should take responsability regarding videogames and age limit. The ESRB is an American organization that rate videogames by taking into account the content of them, and these classifications go from E (everyone) to AO (adults only). Thus, parents should also be careful with this information and buy games according to their children's age.
ReplyDelete