ARE VIDEO GAMES TURNING US INTO VIOLENT KILLERS, IS THE

GAME TO BLAME?
Each and everytime a teenager
commits an act of violence this
question is always asked; is the game
to blame? Is it the violent video
games that are making us violent
and causing us to want to go and kill
everyone in our path. However many
times the media tell us that this is the
case, studies and reports show that
is not true. The Guardian recently
published a report saying; Video
games are not making us more
violent, study shows the report
tell us that Christopher Ferguson, a
psychologist at Stetson University
in Florida, carried out two studies
into media violence. In the first,
his team correlated US homicide
rates between 1920 and 2005, with
instances of violence depicted in
motion pictures. Although there was
evidence of a moderate correlation
between a rise in screened and
real-life violence during the 1950s,
this reversed throughout the rest
of the century, with instances of
screen violence inversely related to
homicide rates in the 1990s.

this study allows us to see that

infact it is not the video games
that are making teens violent, that
it is old fashioned to suggest that
the audiences would be so passive
when playing the video games
and consider this to be a realistic
portrayl of real life and believe
that it is perfectly ok to go around
killing or causing harm to others.
We did a focus group which backs
up this point; we asked a group
of teenagers from the ages of
16-18 whether they thought the
game was a realistic portrayl of
the real world? and the students
said that they did not believe that
Grand Theft Auto was anything
to be comparable with real life
situations.
There is a risk that
identifying the wrong
problem, such as media
violence, may distract
society from more pressing concerns such as
poverty, education and
vocational disparities
and mental health.

All of the above infomation suggests

that there is no connection between
violence and games but it is still the
number one culprit when theese
crimes occur.
when we asked a group of students
why they play the game the majority
of the answered that they play video
games as a way of escaping from the
real world. Escaping the real world
would suggest that if the students
where to be angry then they are likely
to take their anger out whilst playing
the game rather than inflicting pain on
anyone where it would cause serious
harm and damage.

The hypodermic needle theory

would suggest that because the
teenagers are being constantly
showed violent images when they
are playing these video games that
they would be likely to go out an
comit these sorts of acts of violence.
However using studies from universities and various psychologists we
can tell that this is not the case and
that nowadays teenagers are able to
tell the difference between right and
wrong and so therfore as long as
they are playing the game for short
periods of times and not beccoming
addicted to the games then there is
no issue with playing violent video
games.