Do video games make people violent? This question has been the topic of many heated debates, and there have been just as many studies trying to prove or disprove the correlation between the two. Still, the studies have failed to gather enough evidence to draw a definitive answer. However, from what I have collected and my personal experiences, I believe that video games do not cause violent criminal behavior.
One important factor that has led me to this deduction is the fact that youth violence has decreased during the rise of the video game industry. This sole fact seems to contradict the claim that video games cause violent criminal behavior. Although, this fact alone does not completely debunk a correlation between violent video games and violence.
Many studies, such as those performed by the APA (American Psychological Association), have found that video games do cause increased levels of aggression, and I for one can vouch that this is true. Many times after jumping into multiplayer I find that I am very frustrated or angry if I lost the game. However, it is not the actual violence in the video game that has caused my aggression, but the competitive aspect of it. Like anyone else, I do not like to lose. The APA has also found a correlation between competitiveness in video games and aggression, and it was higher than the previous proposal.
Correlation between competition and aggressive behavior can also be viewed in sports. In tennis, for example, I have often seen tennis players such as Novak Djokovic throw their racquets on the ground in a moment of anger and frustration after having lost a point. This reaction is just one of many examples where an athlete has been seen with a heightened level of aggression during competition. It doesn’t mean that the athlete is going to go around murdering people because he lost a game. In fact, most of these athletes have never committed a violent crime before, and if they had, it was usually not related to the sport itself. My point here is that competition will often cause heightened levels of aggression.
Nevertheless, the media is usually quick to attribute youth violence to video games. In the past, violent movies suffered from these claims, but as they became more commonplace, this opinion subsided. Neither violent movies nor violent video games cause increased levels of criminal behavior, but rather, violent people enjoy violent movies and violent video games. Something the media often fails to address.
Just because I enjoy video games, that on occasion happen to be violent, does not make me a violent person myself. I would never think of harming another person. Like most other “gamers,” I can differentiate fiction from reality, and hence, will not commit any crime because of something I saw in a video game. Only someone who is already violent may take inspiration from a video game. If you take away the video game, the person will still be violent and just as likely to commit a crime, albeit through some other method. If video games truly did make people violent, then the world would be in chaos because I and millions of other “gamers" would have committed a crime already.
