Usually when you start up your browser and load up old reliable Google (or Bing if you’re that kind of person) to search the latest news you’ll come across the new violent act of the day, if not the hour. Car crashes, robberies, murders, riots etc. As Murphy’s law states “anything that can go wrong, will”. Unfortunately, that’s the state of today. But then again, violence has always been a constant thing in the whole history of humanity so it’s not really a new thing of today but really a product of us being more aware of our surroundings. We think things are getting worse but really, it’s basically always been this way. However, I’m not here to talk about how we humans have been beating each other up for no good reason since Cain decided to kill Able because Able made him look bad. I’m here to talk about video games...or am I? It’s actually both.
Have you ever gone to Amazon to order a new video game and once you search for it on Google you come upon a news article saying “child kills three because of new video game” or “violence related to video games”? It’s a tragedy that the youth of today are so corrupted by the venomous video game! You, or maybe you’re 78 year old grandmother, may say this. Also, your overprotective mother. However, I’d like to disagree. Step aside grandma, get off the soapbox and give me a turn. Violence, among other things, is as old as time itself. To say that one thing happened because of one action is completely ridiculous. We are a complicated creature (although I’d like to say otherwise with some people I know of) with many reasons based behind what we do. Even inward feelings. Simply saying that the youth of today is corrupt because of videos games is as ridiculous as saying that cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer. There’s plenty more variables to account for. It cannot be boiled down to one thing. If that were true for everything then I think we would have already solved world peace.
Now, I would like to say that I am not against the idea that video games can bring about a reinforcing habit of violence. However, it takes a whole lot more than Grand Theft Auto to get a kid to steal a car. The news likes to think otherwise. Pointing the finger at one thing is what they do best so I can’t really blame them…actually, yeah, I can. When you read one of these articles it all comes down to what the child was doing before, in this case playing video games. But what they don’t like to do research on is the environment he/she lived in. Were the parents abusive? Did the child not have many, if any, friends? Was he/she failing school? Is the place the kid lives in poverty stricken? These questions and many more should be taken into account. When these are considered it’s easy to see that video games were not the problem but merely an enforcer. On top of this, if the games weren’t with the child then the likelihood of him/her finding a different enforcer is high. Try movies or television. I guarantee those two are seen more by everyday children than video games. The effects of violence are not caused by one thing but many things, most noticeably the people and happenings around us.
Along with haphazardly looking at horrible events with blinders some will act as if this is a new phenomenon when in fact it is far from. If I was asked the question “what is the most prominent thing in history?” I would say violence. And for stupid reasons too. Have you ever heard someone say “I would kill for…” and then follow up with something arbitrary like a soda? No doubt somebody’s done that. Back in the day there were battles fought over land so one could grow more crops than others. Wars, murder, fighting none of this is new. People cannot blame today's society as being violent because of video games or any other media for that matter. As horrible as it is, violence is human nature.
On this great green world of ours we tend to look for answers for the big questions, with preferably understandable answers. We don’t like complexity. When it comes to violence we will point the figure at the most likely suspect but what we should really be doing is looking at the grand scheme of things. It’s not just one thing but a whole host of things. Video games are not the answer to a problem that has been raging on since…well…forever.
