By Jeffery Williams:
Hear me out. Without immediately flagging me as uneducated or even biased, I believe that video games don’t correlate with real-life violence. Now, I know this will remain in debate for as long as the medium exists and that in light of recent tragic shootings in Parkland, Florida, we try to find something to blame as the issue. I entirely and emphatically understand.
We want to be able to find something and claim “this is the reason,” but these are often just scapegoats. Do I believe that excessive violent video game use is healthy? No. But anything in excess is unhealthy.
I’ve been playing video games for as long as I can remember and I was able to separate the games from my reality. One of the main arguments is that these games merge the player’s reality with that of the game, causing them to find it acceptable to act out the various actions of the games. This argument is simply not true. In the copious amount of studies done on the subject, none have come up with a similar result. The most negative results found from excessive play are increased irritability and generally antisocial behavior. These studies apply to video games in general. There haven’t been any different results noticed from violent video games.
Maybe in time, we’ll no longer have these issues and can move on to others. In the meantime, enjoy an old-fashioned round of Halo with some friends. You might realize that playing them hasn’t given you the tools to become a digital killer.
Leave a Reply