How many
times have Video games been blamed for the actions of a violent person? In
America it’s quite a lot. In fact, looking at where most of the debates,
arguments, finger pointing and blame is made, is in America. Most studies that “prove”
a link between real life violence and video game violence are conducted by
American institutes and media coverage on events of real life violence ‘linked’
with video games is extremely high in America. So, what’s going on?
Well first
off, what I’m getting at here is that the big debate of Violence in video games
is a big cultural problem in America. I base this off the fact that as someone
who lives outside of America, I rarely hear of instances of violence being
blamed on video games, but looking for instances where it is, more than the
majority of information I find is linked to America. So why is that? Why does America has such a
fixation on this topic? Well unfortunately I was unable to find any reliable
material on why the debate of links between real life violence and video game violence
is so relevant in America, just blogs and opinions. However I did find an Interesting
study done by Christopher J. Ferguson of the Texas A&M International
University ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178907000055). The overall point of this study was to see if
there was a bias when publishing articles related to video games and real life violence.
Ferguson found that an article ‘proving’ a link between video games and violence
was more likely to be published than one that disproved this linked. So one
possible reason for America’s fixation on this topic is that there is more information
on links proving the connection thus seeming to make it a more valid point. On another point of most studies proving a
link between violence and video games is that most only go so far as to prove a
link between violent thoughts and violent video games, almost none (including longitudinal
studies) report on actual acts of violence but instead focus on immediate or intermediate
feeling and thoughts of aggression, frustration and sadness. While this may
prove that there is a link between violence in video games and violent thoughts
or feelings, it doesn’t prove a link to actual acts of violence, and that
action is what the debate is all about. This makes any research that concludes
a link between the two invalid unless it does show a relation between violent
games and violent acts not just thoughts and feelings.
So perhaps
bias and misinformation is what makes it such a relevant topic in America. Even
America’s media is more likely to report on stories that ‘prove links’ between violence
and video games. Look at the Sandy Hook Shooting, one of the first things the media
reported being the cause of it was video games despite there being no real evidence
to prove this (http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/20/sandy-hook-shooting-video-games-blamed-again/).
In fact when you look at America’s crime rates and the popularity of video
games you can see that as video games gained popularity, real life violence dropped
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/19/as-video-game-sales-climb-year-over-year-violent-crime-continues-to-fall/)
a surprising contradiction to how American media portrays acts of violence.
While there
are a lot more factors that could be taken in account when talking about links
between violent games and real life violence in America (Gun control being one
of the biggest problems) you can’t really deny that America has a weird obsession
with this topic and there has to some reason for that.
Have a look
at Healthcare Triage’s view https://youtu.be/m2Jq7vPxYGg
CNN reported
on this stuff too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvhovITygBI
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