Video Games

Video games are often violent, inciting a decades-old debate as to if the gamer is more likely to develop violent behavior as a result or not. I believe it may contribute to people’s likelihood of violence, but is not solely responsible. Is it not a certain type of person who gains pleasure in animated strippers or running people over?

Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who has reviewed thousands of documents about the Columbine shootings, published his theory in the American Journal of Psychiatry that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold massacred after their parents took away their video game privileges. He wrote, as published by The Denver Post that it was clear they became more violent after being forced to quit cold-turkey from their computer or video games as punishment. If that is the reaction from playing Doom, what would the reaction be from a game like Grand Theft Auto in which you steal cars, run amok in an world with no rules and participate in “date missions” in order to bed the girlfriend?

While our second article reports that the results of a longitudinal study say that playing a video game is not a predictor of aggressive behavior, the study does have its’ flaws. Mainly, the video game in question dealt with a fantasy story line; that is not enough evidence to convince me that the same results apply to a first-person shooter game set in a world much like ours.


picture from Google image search; gaygamer.net