Rosie Caporaso
Period 4
1/28/13

VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE

BANG BANG BANG, 3 shots are fired at my video game character. I ducked and avoided the third shot by a hair. I crawl to the trench to reload my M2 browning machine gun and check my surroundings. At the last second I see a grenade heading my way. I break away and jump into the tank beside me. BOOM a huge explosion rattles my ear drums. One of my comrades is about to get shot by the zombie. I raise the gun up, but its too late, he's blasted to bits. A zombie comes running at me and just as I'm about to fire, my mom yells "Rosie, time to feed the dogs!!!" Game over.

The gore and violence of video games is a fact of life for most teens. Like rock n’ roll of in the 50s, video games are part of growing up for today’s youth. Parents can try to protect their children from the influence, but with little success. Many worry that the violence of video games will effect the way the game players think and act. Although it is commonly believed that video game violence leads to real world violence, evidence shows that the link is unclear.
There is much evidence that shows that video game violence is not related to real life violence. Although video games don't help a person achieve great things, they aren't as harmful as some critics state they are. Psychologist Brad Bushman at the Ohio State University quotes, "'Playing violent video games wont turn your child into a psychopathic killer.'" (Vandantam) Many children are playing aggressive sports such as football, martial arts, and many more, and yet they are happier people just trying to have fun. The US Supreme Court concluded that research on video game violence being related to real life violence is too flawed and is too inconsistent. Not enough evidence has showed that the two are related. In 2007, when the Virginia Tech Massacre occurred, specialists such as Dr. Phil blamed it on violent video games. Later on though, investigators found that the perpetrator was not a violent video game player after all. When the US secret service evaluated some school shooters they found no evidence to suggest that they consumed more video game violence then anyone else. When there is so much flawed evidence on violent video games being related to real life, why do we blame the media? The suggestion that banning violent video games would make these real life violent events go away is false not sensible. Lets work on bigger tasks like improving our mental health system and gun control.

There has been many arguments about whether video game violence can change a persons behavior, if played. NPR.org "It's A Duel: How Do Violent Video Games Affect Kids?" by Shankar Vedantam gave evidence of video game violence having affect on people. Researchers have drawn different assumptions on it. At The Ohio State University psychologist Brad Bushman made a group of people who play non-violent video games and those who did play violent video games. After showing a series of violent images to the students to the groups Brad Bushman noted "'What we found is for people who were exposed to a lot of violent video games, their brains did not respond to the violent