There are a lot of shooting incidents that happen nowadays, where the suspect has a history in playing violent video games. In fact, they assume that video games were the main reason for the incident of a shooting, which occurred on the 14th of December, 2012 by Adam Lanza who killed 20 children and 6 teachers in Sandyhook Elementary School because of the negative influence violent games had on him (Domenech, 2013, p.1). Despite this event, video games do not cause violence in the real world. Moreover, based on a study from 1996 till 2014 by the U.S. Department of Justice, video games increased in sales at the same time with the decrease of violent crimes. Video games sales had increased more than 3 billion dollars which led to the decrease of violent crimes by 1.5 million crimes over this 8 year period …show more content…
For example, according to Yale Global Online (2012), the world’s safest countries happen to be the ones where videogames are popular the most, which is due to being well developed and stable and not about the availability of video games (para.1). This supports the point that mental health plays an important role in causing violent accidents. Others might say a large number of incidents were caused by obsessed video gamers committed a lot violent acts in our community such as Adam Lanza. They claim that any human being who plays violent video games on a daily basis will make him more likely to commit violent acts. However, it turned out that he had some mental health issues and was diagnosed with Asperger 's syndrome. In fact, According to Kain “more than half of mass shooters over the last 30 years had mental health problems”(2015, p.4).This claim is very clear for that incident; because any person who kills 27 human beings including his mother and then himself after killing all these children would have some mental
According to research, there are more than half of mass shooters have some symptoms of mental illness, but less than
Many people believe that the main cause of mass shootings are the people who are doing it have a mental health problem, and sometimes they might even be right, but not everyone who has been involved in a mass shooting has had mental health problems. “...data shows that, at most, only around 5 percent of crimes in the U.S. are performed by people with mental illness and that the percentage is the same for violent crimes (link is external)—which means that 95 percent of violent crimes are committed by non-mentally ill individuals” (Psychology Today). There are cases that support that some people have had severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia. Yet, there are also cases that prove there is very little evidence linking mental health and mass shootings together. There are very few mental illnesses that would make a person want to go and commit such a murder.
A fallacy is the use of poor, or invalid, reasoning for the construction of an argument. In other words, it is an argument that makes an error in logic or assumptions that should not have been made. In the formal setting, an argument is two sides presenting their sides argument using logic and deductive reasoning. In the book “Writing Arguments,” authors John Ramage, John Bean, and June Johnson compare several fallacies. The authors describe the straw man fallacy as an argument when a writer constructs a misinterpreted version of an argument that distorts its original meaning and intentions in order to criticizes it as if it were the real argument (401).
The article “Do Video Games Kill” written by Karen Sternheimer responds to one of the most sought-after question; are video games the cause for “young killers”? (220) Sternheimer believes the influence of video games on today’s youth maybe spiraling out of control. She focuses most of the blame on the media, politicians and the Juvenile Justice System. Sternheimer suggests that there are other factors to blame for violent behavior: poverty, the neighborhood, unemployment, family violence, divorced parents and mental illness (218). While juvenile crimes have declined, and personal backgrounds effect actions, it cannot be proven that video game violence has no to little effect on America’s youth.
Violent games can corrupt the minds of young men and women. There are many forms of media in our world today. It affects people in different ways. Although everyone doesn’t react the same way to media, many have negative reactions to it. Crime is heavily influenced by media in our
Andrew: although some studies do show That’s not 100 percent true. Boys with Mental Health and other problems that play violent video games can be affected by violent video games but
These are the type of children to most likely be picked on because they are not like other students. This violent act has increased in recent years from 2000-2013 and since 2013 there have been about 215 school shootings. We do not know as to why these mass shootings have been more frequent but it does not necessarily have to do with mental illness. Even though many mass shooters have mental illness it does not mean that these mental illnesses have been increasing to result in a mass shooting. “While many mass shooters had mental-health problems, as the Mother Jones data shows, there is no reason to believe that there has been an increase in mental illness rates in the last several years that could help explain the rise in mass shootings.
Some of these images were violent and others were not. When they showed the group of people the images, the researchers studied the brain activity of them. The ones that played the violent video games had decreased brain activity when they were shown the violent images, Tiffany Kaiser states in her article “Study: Violent Video Games Desensitize Players, Cause Heightened Aggression.” Some researchers look at different areas rather than gun control or violence in the media and video games; they look at how the mental health of children can be apart of the school
“According to Patrick Kierkegaard, a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex in England, early studies on violent games were biased. In other words, scientists had negative opinions about violent video games and that they designed their experiments to support their ideas” (Hile 14). Kierkegaard studies into the early research on the subject of violent video games, also announced strong data which supports his previous statement showing bias in research. “According to Kierkegaard, "violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s. " There were 1.36 million violent crimes in the United States in 2005 versus 1.42 million in 2004, "while video games have steadily increased in popularity and use” (HIle 14).
Violent video games have been blamed for everything from bullying to school shootings. Critics of these video games believe they cause people to commit violent acts in real life. These critics, mainly comprised of parents and other responsible adults, don’t agree with what the video games portray. Others say the video games cause less violence and are an outlet for anger and stress. Although violent video games have violent actions in them, teenagers should be able to play violent video games because there isn’t enough evidence to prove they make teens more aggressive, it could prevent violence, and violent video games are a fun and relaxing way to relieve stress and anger.
It is often seen that positive rewards and lack of punishment for aggressive behaviours reinforces aggression in a person. There is a significant correlation between viewing violent television and aggression later in life, as well as playing violent video games and aggressive behaviors. The role of observational learning has also been cited as an important factor in the rise of rating systems for TV, movies, and video games. This is seen in the case of violent games such as Counter-Strike which provide the gamers with the option of choosing the side of the Terrorists which has been proved to influences gamers towards violent tendencies and even situations where children have in the presence of fire arms in an attempt to recreate game have in fact killed each other or even hurt themselves on numerous occasions. It has even been seen that games like Call Of Duty and Mortal Combat has also increased the violent tendencies in children.
There are games that literally replicate and give people the ability to score points for doing the very same thing that these students are doing inside schools, where you get extra points for finishing someone off who’s lying there begins for their life.” ( 6) There are several ideas that say young people benefit from these violent video games “Surprisingly, playing video games can help our physical, mental, and emotional health.” It helps them to improve hand eye coordination and thinking ability. These benefits are not worth the risk of being influenced by violent video games. (7) All in all the research and officials say that violent video games affect how children, teenagers and young adults act.
In our society video games are becoming more and more deadly and violent. With video games such as Grand Theft Auto , Mortal Combat, and Call of Duty centralizing death and murder, the act of killing becomes normalized and dulled with the repeated action. According to Charisma News several mass murders have been linked to video games, such as the Sandy Hook shooting, the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado and the prayer group shooting by Michael Carneal which were all frequent players of some violent first-person shooter video
Research shows that at least 83% of children in the US aged between 8-12 years are involved in video gaming once a month. This elevated number of video gaming has had its fair share of effects on its consumers. For instance, video games have positively influenced children to work together in completing various tasks, and often improve a child’s thinking capacity, especially through solving puzzles (Anderson et al, 2007). However, the contentious issue has been the effects of violent games on children, which are often negative to their well-being. In short, violent video games increase the aggressiveness of a child, and may eventually cause mental ill health.
In our time, technology has become one of our essential things in life; specifically video games. Video games are electronic system used to run games. They involve human interaction specially teenagers. Many researches have been done on the effects of video games showing that there is positive and negative impacts. As we know not all video games contain violent contents, but most of them are violent and mentally dangerous.