Playing Violent Video Games makes children more likely to be violent in everyday life.

A short report by Jake Ford If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, wed all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. ~ Marcus Brigstoke In 1961, behaviourist psychologist Albert Bandura (Bandura 1973) performed an experiment with young children, where they were placed in a room with an actor behaving violently towards a toy clown. The results shook the world of psychology as young children were found to be able to mimic acts of violence with startling accuracy, including verbal aggression and methods of physical attack. The experiment was labelled as both brilliant and controversial and we may never see another like it with stricter government regulations on child research. (Pia 2008) With scientists unable to anonymously observe children, all information regarding video games and violence is rendered invalid due to researcher bias and desirability bias; their behaviour whilst being observed will be vastly different to their behaviour whilst alone. The columbine massacre of 1997 had games such as DooM held responsible for the violence. One family going as far as to file a lawsuit against the games developers. (Ward.M 2001) However within the eyes of the law, the video game was not at fault for the deaths of thirteen innocent people, two homicidal people were responsible. So no compensation was required and the game remained available. But to contrast this, the 2003 game Manhunt was pulled from the shelves from all game shops around Britain when it was found within the room of a murderer One year after its release. The banned game in question, reportedly sold over 1.7 million copies (Take-Two 2008) This implies more than 1.7 Million users who were exposed to content able to turn friends (Ward.M) into murderer and victim. Yet of that vast number only one case was found of the media turning a child to violence. Violent videogames are a growing industry, recent release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 taking in over 775 million dollars in its opening week. But school related shootings have infact been in decline. Between 2000 and 2005 there was an average of 17 deaths a year due to school violence, whereas from 2006 to present the average stands only at 7. This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that playing violent videogames does not make children more likely to be violent in real life. Having played numerous titles of a violent nature yet not killed anyone I can say with assurance I am amongst many like myself who have not been turned into gibbering psychopaths sue to early exposure to violent media. The same way that watching harry potter did not turn me into a wizard. References: Take-Two (2008) Recommendation of the Board of Directors. [online] Available from http://web.archive.org/web/20080408234728/http://taketwovalue.com/documents/TTWO_Value.pdf [02 December 2011] Ward,M. (2001)Columbine families sue computer game makers BBC News SCI/TECH [online] Available from <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1295920.stm> [02 December 2011] Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: a social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Pia,C.(2008)Research with children: perspectives and practices. New York;London:Jessicca Kingsley