Video games are known for violence, we all know that. You shoot things, you blow things up, you rampage and go crazy from the comfort of your console, and nobody’s really getting hurt. In fact, I’ve always felt it’s better to get your aggressions out in a game, instead of actually hurting somebody.
There’s of course people who disagree with this, and who like to blame things like video games for real life shootings. This is usually the kneejerk reaction in the wake of a tragedy, and it usually simplifies and trivializes the problem.
We haven’t heard anything about violent games in quite some time, although we probably will again soon, and as one site feels, this debate could cause more harm than good. As Jill Scharr writes, there’s yet another study that says there may be a correlation between games and violence, and “for every study that claims to correlate violence and video games, there’s a least another that found no such connection.”
Indeed, as one professor told Yahoo, “Some studies do find effects; some don’t. There’s no consistency. Most kids play violent video games, and there’s really no evidence of it having any negative impact on them. Kids today are actually less aggressive than they were 20 or 30 years ago.”
This debate should continue for some time, until the arbiters of good taste in society find something else to blame for the world’s problems. We whole heartedly agree with this report that the debate “distracts people from more pressing issues, like mental-health reform or educational disparities.” And let’s not forget gun control either…
