Don’t Throw Away Your Video Games
Dear frightened public,
Violence is something we as a society are faced with everyday, and oddly enough it’s not something we turn away from. In fact, many of us in the United States go so far as to embrace violence as a form of entertainment. I am no exception to this culture. For years I’ve enjoyed violent movies like Die Hard and Hannibal. And thanks to the inventive minds at Sony who bestowed upon us the Playstation, I am an active participant in the realm of virtual reality violence. My friends, like me, revel in the ‘over the top’ action and enjoyment of the sudden thrill of putting down a few Nazis in Medal of Honor . As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that there are more and more critics who view these forms of media as detrimental to the minds of children.
What I found to be harmless fun was considered, according to David Walsh and the people at healthyminds.org, material that was brainwashing me into becoming a violent anti-social child who would be incapable of having any sort of regular human relationship. They support this theory with a number of studies which are meant to show that these sorts of violent images in movies and games are a direct cause in an increase in aggressive tendencies in individuals as well as a cause of anti-social behavior. What they fail to do, however, is explain how people like me, who have played and watched violence all our lives, turn out just fine. These studies also require an explanation as to how the effect of violent movies and games is any different from a number of other, far more prevalent, activities which also encourages aggressiveness in children and adults.

There are numerous weapons utilized by the opposition to media violence. There seems to be an plethora of studies that support the claim of violence in video games and movies being linked to human aggression. Now understand that when I say plethora, I mean plethora. A simple ‘google search’ of the keywords “violence” and “videogames” will give millions of results, the majority being articles or studies discussing the effects of violence. The scenarios that I’m concerned with, though, are those establishing a relationship between violence and behavior. Examples of this would include the report by Healthyminds.org. Their report focuses on the effects of violence in movies and television. They come to the conclusion that:
“Individuals with greater exposure to media violence see the world as a dark and sinister place. Television programs present a narrow view of the world, and the world they present is violent. Thus, people who watch a lot of television are more likely than those who watch less to see the world as being violent and overestimate their chance of being involved in violence.” (Healthyminds)
David Walsh, from the National Institute on Media and the Family, came to a similar conclusion on video games. Throughout this extensive report Walsh make’s a number of claims, the most powerful being that, “exposure to violent games increases aggressive actions. (Walsh)”
He presents this data in the form of a graph that illustrates as the violent content increases, so does the percentage of physical altercations arising between children. With that in mind, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the people at healthyminds.org, seeing as how they’re endorsed by
American Psychiatric Association; and David Walsh, whose credentials include a Phd. These guys know what they’re doing when it comes to collecting data, so I’m certainly not going to fault them there. What I will dispute, though, are the conclusions they came to based on their data. These reports exemplify the use of Post Hoc

fallacies. Both authors make the claim that increased exposure to violence is a direct cause of increased violent tendencies.
Now, if I were to tell you that ice cream sales rose in a city while the temperature did as well, would we assume that the ice cream sales were the cause of the temperature? No, of course not, the same logic applies here. All these tests prove is correlation, not causation. Now, to be fair, the second report, by Walsh, did address this to some extent. To try and remedy this, Walsh explains that even kids with low measurable violence before playing games showed a major increase (Walsh). However, this straw man doesn’t dispel the inherent problem with the logic.
He mentions “measurable hostility,” yet never goes into detail as to what that actually means or how it’s measured so it ultimately does nothing to bolster his argument. Aside from the fact that these arguments are flawed due to the logical fallacy it suffers from, a huge double standard is applied. These critics strive to point out the dangers posed by movies and games, yet never seem to acknowledge that these activities are hardly alone in causing the affects they attribute to them.
For instance, a study by the DaVinci Institute showed that participating in extracurricular sports actually increases the likely hood that one will engage in violent crimes such as assault. Now while I personally would not invest a whole lot of confidence into the report, I find it no less plausible or significant than those focuses on violent games for instance. So if we as society are going to condemn games based on the current evidence, then we would have to do the same for sports as well.
When you hear about horrible tragedies which result in great loss of life, it’s easy to get caught up in your emotions. You feel so revolted by what happened that you’re willing to blame anyone or anything for what happened, if only so that you can make sense of a senseless act. This is exactly what happened with the two famous school shootings at Columbine and

Virginia Tech. Not long after the events had occurred did men and women with agendas begin to crawl out of the woodworks. Like vultures, they caught the scent of a dying animal and descended on what they saw as the root cause of what had taken place – violent movies and games. In the cases of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the kids behind columbine) a lot of attention was given to the fact that the pair were avid Doom (a graphic shooter game) players.
Without a doubt the pair were obsessed with the game, often making references to it in their journals, comparing what they were going to do to the kids to what was done in the game. “Pop BOOM just like Doom” Harris was quoted as saying in one of the video’s he made (Columbine doc). Now, as powerful as all this may seem, you cannot let yourself buy into it. In reality it suffers from the same major fallacy as the reports from before did. We see correlation, not causation. If the argument that video games were somehow responsible for the kid’s actions, they would have to have displayed vaguely normal behavior beforehand. However if you look into the pasts of these kids you’ll find that both of them were taking different anti-depressants at the time they planned out and committed their heinous crime (Larkin). This, combined with the frequent bullying they were subjected to seems like a far more reasonable explanation for their crimes than progressive brain washing at the hands of a blocky game involving aliens and zombies.
The argument made for Seung-Hui Cho, the man responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre, wasn’t particularly different. Simply replace “games” with “movies” and “Doom” with “Oldboy.” During the investigation into Cho and why he acted like he did, a large number of videos, writings, and pictures began to surface. The ones that received the most attention

were those of Cho imitating poses and scenes from a number of violent movies, particularly
Oldboy ( AP VT killer). I remember seeing Fox News show the pictures comparing the two, it didn’t take long for them to assemble an all star panel of experts, all in agreement that Cho was the product of a society fueled by runaway violence. Yet, like with the Columbine shooters, if we look back before into
Cho’s past, we’ll see that he had the symptoms of a disturbed individual long before he saw the movie. As far back as middle school he was diagnosed with a severe form of an anxiety disorder known as selective mutism as well as depression (Adams).
I don’t actually view the majority of people that take these stances against violent images as being opportunists or anything. In fact I honestly believe that the majority of them honestly do want the best for our society and especially our youth. They perceive the violence in entertainment media as being a major cause of the violent crimes in the US, and as such they simply want to do their best to alleviate the problem to some degree. I can respect that, in fact I encourage the people at Healthyminds.org to continue to find ways to help those with mental illnesses, or for people like David Walsh to remain vigilant and ensure that the wellbeing the our countries youth is watched over. What I don’t want is for these well meaning people to continue using their faulty reasoning to place the blame on an overabundance of violence. Really, I see it as a failure on multiple levels which allowed this event to take place. The parents who did not see the signs in their own children, the school officials who do nothing to help these troubled kids. If anything they are more responsible for whatever crimes are committed as it was their duty to look after these kids. But I would not place all blame on them either, sometimes people

are just born broken, a human disaster. And much like a hurricane we can do nothing to stop it, simply prepare for it and pick up the pieces afterwards.
Works Cited
Adams , Duncan. “The alienation and anger of Seung-Hui Cho”. The Roanoke Times. 10-17-08
<http://www.roanoke.com/vtinvestigation/wb/wb/xp-130177>.
Brown, Janelle (1999, April 23). Doom, Quake and mass murder.
<Archive.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/04/23/gamers/>.
“Columbine Documents”. Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. 10-19-08
<http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/pdf/900columbinedocs.pdf>.
Goodman, Peter. “Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing “. New York
Times. 10-18-08. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/business/media/07violence.html
?_r=1&oref=slogin>.
Larkin, Ralph. Comprehending Columbine. Philadelphia : emple University Press, 2007.
“Psychiatric Effects of Media Violence”. American Psychiatric Association. 10-18-08
<http://www.healthyminds.org/mediaviolence.cfm>.
“Study: Sports Increase Criminal Activity”. Impact Lab. 10-17-08
<http://www.impactlab.com/2006/03/19/study-sports-increase-criminal-activity/>.
Associated Press. “Virginia Tech killer's hammer photograph resembles the violent South
Korean movie 'Oldboy'“. Internation Herald Tribune. 10-17-08. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/20/america /NA-GEN-US-University-Shooting-
Movie-Inspiration.php>.

Walsh, David. “Video Game Violence and Public Policy”. National Institute on Media and the
Family. 10-18-08 <http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/walsh.html>.