The President Of The United States Thinks Video Games Could Make Kids Violent
In the wake of last week’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., critics again pointed to violent video games as an instigator of real-life violence.
A neighbor of accused shooter Nikolas Cruz told the Miami Herald that Cruz “escaped his misery” by playing video games for as much as 15 hours a day. “It was kill, kill, kill, blow up something, and kill some more, all day,” he said.
Gary Abernathy, a Washington Post contributing columnist and publisher of the Hillsboro (Ohio) Times-Gazette, noted this week that modern action films, TV shows and video games "outdo themselves in depicting gun violence committed so casually and with such frequency that viewers become dangerously numb to it."
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin posted a video to his Facebook page last week, urging lawmakers and "anyone who's in a position of influence" to consider how to repair the nation’s cultural fabric, which he said is “getting shredded beyond recognition.” Speaking to a radio interviewer, Bevin blamed a "culture of death that is being celebrated" via violent video games, TV shows and music.
A few researchers have suggested that violent games are “exemplary teachers of aggression.”
Not so fast, says Villanova University psychologist and researcher Patrick Markey. “All we can really say for sure is that there does not appear to be a link at this time between violent video games and school shootings,” he said. “And if there is a link, it goes in the opposite direction.”
President Trump on Thursday joined the chorus, warning about children's exposure to violence in video games, movies and on the Internet. "We have to do something about maybe what they're seeing and how they're seeing it. … We may have to talk about that also," he said in a meeting with state lawmakers on school security.
A few studies have shown that playing violent video games temporarily makes players more aggressive — in a study in 2009, playing Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance on a PlayStation prompted participants to offer spicier hot sauce to lab volunteers who said they didn’t like spicy foods. The aggressive tendencies wore off within moments, researchers found.
MODS: STOP PLAYING DUMB. THIS IS NOT A METATHREAD ABOUT POLITICS, IT IS ABOUT PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF VIDEO GAMES.