Guest Editorial: Video games and violence

My name is Connor Revette, and I’m a seventh grade student at Owego Apalachin Middle School. I am writing this because I wanted to tell you why video games do not cause violence. 

You may be thinking, “Why would I listen to a kid,” and I understand why. Most of us would gather whatever we could find and just say, “Who really cares.” But I’ve searched through countless articles to find evidence that is true and actually good. 

If you think this is worthy of being shared, help me share my cause by publishing it in the newspaper. 

Let’s get back on topic. This will be split into three parts. The first part will be about all of the misinformation about it, the second will be about the statistics, and the last being about the overall effect of video games, worldwide. Now, with all that being said, let’s get into it.

The misinformation I’m going to talk about is the “Video Games Cause Violence” craze. One of the main parts about the “Video Games Cause Violence” craze is because of Donald Trump and the former presidents that blamed video games for shootings, most notably the El Paso massacre. Donald Trump blamed video games, saying it is glorified violence. 

But here’s the thing, there is absolutely no link to video games actually causing violence. In the article, “Video Games Get Blamed Despite Lack of Evidence,” it says, “Researchers have extensively studied whether there is a causal link between video games and violent behavior, and while there isn’t quite a consensus, there is broad agreement that no such link exists.” 

This basically says that there’s no link to video games and violence, so he’s overreacting a lot. Well, there are plenty more misconceptions about video games, but that’ll make a 28-page story. So to keep it short, I shall go onto the next one.

You can talk all you want about something, but you need evidence to support it. The type of evidence I’m going to show you are the statistics. By showing this to people you can actually show others why you should play video games. 

Alright, back onto topic. The article, “Does playing violent video games cause aggression,” a longitudinal intervention study, showed this, “However, above and beyond this the General Aggression Model (GAM, [7]) assumes that repeatedly primed thoughts and feelings influence the perception of ongoing events and therewith elicits aggressive behavior as a long term effect.” 

This shows that the people did have thoughts, but it was a good reason. If that doesn’t change your mind, then think about this. An article called “Video Games Get Blamed, Despite Lack of Evidence,” states, “If video games did indeed cause some mass shootings, one might expect such events to be common in Japan or South Korea. Both countries spend more per capita on video games than the United States, according to Newzoo, and have huge video game communities. Japan is home to video game makers like Nintendo, Sega and Sony, while South Korea has a highly developed competitive video gaming industry.” 

This is basically saying that Japan and South Korea have less crime, but spend more time playing video games. Well, that’s over, let’s get onto the last reason. 

This may sound conflicting to my argument, but video games do indeed cause violent thoughts. Here’s the thing, however, the thoughts are only a five percent increase while playing video games. It’s not only video games that get violent thoughts though. Sports make people have a 10 percent increase. 

In the article, “Violence and Aggression in Sports: An In-Depth Look (Part One),” it states, “In general, aggression can be seen as unprovoked hostility or attacks on another person which are not sanctioned by society. However, in the sports context the aggression is provoked in the sense that the two opposing teams have willingly agreed to compete against each other.” 

This is the same type of aggression that you get while playing video games. So all in all, video games do not cause violence.

In conclusion, video games are indeed safe and do not make more than the normal aggressive thoughts. 

Thanks for reading.

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