Do Video Games Cause Violent Behavior?

Time after time, when a horrific shooting occurs, video games are often accused of being a key factor in motivating the perpetrators of the crime. Shootings such as; Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Aurora are just a handful the media has targeted as being related to video games. While the shooters can be connected to being players of video games, that shouldn't necessarily mean that the video games are a significant factor in their violent actions. Correlation is definitely not causation and there is just not the scientific evidence to back up these claims. However, there has been a substantial amount of research that exhibit video games are not a primary factor to violent behavior and that they can actually have positive benefits …show more content…
Their conclusion was "No single risk factor consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently. Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior " (27). So while video games can be linked to short temporary aggression, it cannot be blamed as a significant factor in acts of violence. The APA looked to other factors such as antisocial personality traits, mental state, parental conflict, and peer association to be key factors in violence. Dr. Mark Coulson, a Psychology professor at Middlesex University has told the media, "I fully acknowledge that exposure to repeated violence may have short-term effects - you would be a fool to deny that - but the long-term consequences of crime and actual violent behavior, there is just no evidence linking violent video games with that." So, despite the years of extensive research into the claim that video games cause violence, the claim does not hold