Of the top 50 video games, 50% are considered violent. Americans today blame the video game franchise for shootings, bullying, and the abuse of women. They think video games reward lousy behavior, desensitize the mind, and teach bad morals. Approximately 97% of American kids, aged 12 through 17, play video games. Statistics also show that four out of five male households own a gaming system. In the homes, the average man plays nine hours a week; however, only a small percentage show violent behavior. Dr. Patrick M. Markley says, “90% of young males play video games. Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as “Call of Duty,” “Halo,” or “Grand Theft Auto,” is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks.” Statistically, as the sale of video games increase, crime rates decrease. Over the last 20 years, video game sales have increased 204%, bringing in a whopping 13.1 billion dollars in revenue. Although some say video games have a negative behavioral effect on youth, the Supreme Court ruled that violent video games do not cause aggressive behavior among youth. In a recent attempt to ban the sale of video games to minors in the state of California, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said, “there is no definitive evidence proving that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively” (“Violent Video …show more content…
Things like abusive home life, poverty, neglect, neighborhood crime, substance abuse, and mental health problems need to be factors in the search for violence causes. Studies cannot adequately make assumptions based on observed effects because all people have different social, family, and mental backgrounds. Categorizing study participants as the same, based on factors like age, will not give accurate results. Also, in modern experiments, participants are not given realistic times to play and be observed. Usually, experimental groups only play for about ten minutes, and this cannot provide real stimulation of the brain (“Violent Video