Violent Video Games cause Violent Behaviour

The facts are strongly against the Proposition’s analysis The proposition’s arguments fail to stand up in the real world. Several major studies published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, The British Medical Journal and The Lancet (among others) have shown no conclusive link between video game usage and real-life violent behaviour. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found no evidence linking video game use to the massacre at Columbine (or other highly publicized school shootings).[1] There is no evidence to support the idea that people exposed to violent video game (or other violent media content) will then go on to commit crimes.[2] Further, if violent video games were causing violent behaviour, we would expect to see rates of violent crime increase as games with realistic portrayals of violence became more widely available on popular game consoles. Instead, violent crime has decreased in recent years. Some economists have argued (based on time series modelling) that increased sales of violent video games are associated with decreases in violent crime.[3] In Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do, researchers/authors Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Mental Health and Media refute claims of violent behaviour increase caused by violent video games. The researchers' quantitative and qualitative studies (surveys and focus groups) found that young adolescents view game behaviour as unrelated to real-life actions, and this is why they can enjoy criminal or violent acts in a game that would horrify them in reality. They also found evidence that those relatively few adolescents who did not play video games at all were more at-risk for violent behaviours such as bullying or fighting (although the sample size was too small for statistical significance). The authors speculated that because video game play has gained a central and normative role in the social lives of adolescent boys, a boy who does not play any video games might be socially isolated or rejected. Finally, although more study is needed, there is some evidence to suggest that violent video games might allow players to get aggressive feelings out of their system (i.e., video game play might have a cathartic effect), in a scenario that does not harm anyone else.[4],[5],[6] [1] O’Toole, Mary Ellen, ‘The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment perspective’, Critical Incident Response Group, www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/school-shooter [2] Editorial. Is exposure to media violence a public-health risk? The Lancet, 2008, 371:1137. [3] Cunningham, Scott, et al., ‘Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime’, 7 April 2011, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804959 [4] Kutner, Lawrence & Cheryl K. Olson. Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. Simon and Schuster, 2008 [5] Bensley, Lillian and Juliet Van Eenwyk. Video games and real-life aggression: A review of the literature, Journal of Adolescent Health, 2001, 29:244-257. [6] Griffiths, Mark. Video games and health. British Medical Journal, 2005, 331:122-123.