Video Games and Violence.

Video games are hugely popular these days. With addictive games like World of Warcraft rising in popularity, and pop culture references, video games have probably become more popular than ever. In fact, according to this CNN article, roughly 90% of U.S. kids between the ages of 8 and 16 play video games for about 13 hours a week, and more with some boys. It only makes sense that exposure to violent video games will, over time, make a person numb to seeing that violence, it will normalize that much violence in one's life, leading quite possibly to a rise in aggressive behavior.

In one case, it's quite possible that repeated exposure to the violent video game, Grand Theft Auto, led to a murder. This CBS News article tells the story of an 18-year-old named Devin Moore, who was a big fan of the game. In fact, he played the game day and night for months. Then one summer morning in 2003, Moore was brought into the local police station on suspicion of stealing a car. Apparently, Moore was cooperative as he was being booked and then, suddenly his behavior took a turn for the worse. Moore tackled an officer, stole his gun and shot him twice. Then he shot two more police officers, killing them all. According to police, after he was captured Moore stated "Life is like a video game. Everybody's got to die sometime."

Now maybe blaming Grand Theft Auto for this violent behavior is grasping for straws. I mean, it was noted that Devin Moore had a troubled past and spent some time in foster homes. Of course that played a factor in this case. But it could also be true that, due to repeated rehearsing of violent situations via video game, Moore resorted to violent behavior when he felt panicked.

There is still the other side to the coin. The argument for this is that, most kids who play violent video games do not actually ever commit violent acts. According to this article by MIT professor, Henry Jenkins, the studies linking violent video games to aggressive behaviors are not completely reliable because the environment where the subjects are playing the games are very different from the environment in which they'd be normally playing, at home.

There's also the possibility that people who are already naturally aggressive are drawn to violent video games. Thus making them susceptible to violent behavior anyway, because of their aggression. So whichever side of the fence you fall on, it must be noted that video games these days are increasingly violent, and it certainly seems easy for kids to get their hands on them. Although there is no concrete, long term evidence that shows kids are prone to more aggression due to violent video games, there are the short term studies that have proven this to be true. There's also the case of Devin Moore, which could or could not have been linked to his habitual playing of Grand Theft Auto, a notoriously violent game. I'm not making a call to arms, I just think we should start paying more attention to how jaded our society is becoming towards extreme violence. What, exactly, could this lead to in our future?