Video Games Do Cause Aggression Analysis

Since the creation of the first video game in 1958 the concept of interactive media has grown immensely into a worldwide industry. Nowadays they are a very common form of entertainment that most homes seem incomplete without. Video games have been able to make huge advances in the realism of their gameplay due to their popularity. Although most of these advances were widely accepted there are some that have created a lot of controversy with the public. Video game violence, in recent years, has became one of the biggest topics of controversy when it comes to video games. The argument that is currently going on is whether or not prolonged exposure to violence in video games lead to an increase in violent tendencies in the real world. Those who …show more content…
Twenge wrote her article in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting after she felt that there was “not enough focus on the psychological state of the shooter”. The goal of the article is to inform the public that there could be very negative side-effects to prolonged exposure to violent video games. In the article she uses a study done by two students at Iowa State University to back her claims. The study did a meta-analysis, “A subset of systematic reviews; a method for systematically combining pertinent qualitative and quantitative study data from several selected studies to develop a single conclusion that has greater statistical power”, on data from 134,000 people in 2010. The results of the experiment revealed a positive correlation of .2, or a small to medium psychological effect on the average person. Jean Twenge points out that a small to medium effect is not something we should necessarily worry about on a personal level. The issue is rather that a small to medium effect on the general population could lead to rise in those who are extremely aggressive by double or triple the current amount. She concludes her argument expressing that she does not know exactly what should be done, but the removal of violent video games should significantly reduce real-life …show more content…
I think someone needs to develop a better way of testing the effects on a mass scale with less variables involved. My personal stance on the matter is that whether or not video games lead to aggressive behavior the benefits outway the possible effects they have on the general population. As for the extreme cases I feel like there are better ways to go about dealing with them then banning all violent video games. I do not believe that a ban on them will lead to the eradication or even a significant drop in extremely violent crimes and mass shootings that occur. The reason I came to this conclusion is because of the fact that only a small percentage of extremely violent crimes are linked to video