Violent Video Games Cause and Effect

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Is it true that violent video games turn people into mindless mass murderers? In recent years there have been a number of mass shootings in the United States which the mass media has blamed mostly on violent video games. Since these types of games have only been out for less than 25 years there is a slight issue with trying to answer that question at the moment. The problem is that experts and researchers agree to the fact that at this moment in time it is impossible to tell due to the lack of significant research on the topic. There needs to be more research conducted, analyzed, and published for anyone to make such claims. Most of the studies that have been conducted all say in the end that there just isn't enough data to see such a trend emerging. I feel that violent video games can help reduce stress and anger by providing an outlet for tension, taking stress out on characters in the game instead of real life, and providing motivation to consistently achieve higher scores or levels. I. “Failure to Demonstrate that Playing Violent Video Games Diminishes Prosocial Behavior.” by Mark Nielsen and Morgan J. Tear. A. In this article, the author’s argue that prosocial behavior would be higher in participants who played a prosocial video game and lower in participants who played the anti-social or violent video game. 1. Their conclusion is that in the experiments they conducted the participants showed no signs of reduced anti-social behavior whatsoever. II. “Violent Video Games Stress People Out and Make Them More Aggressive.” by Brad J. Bushman, Youssef Hasan, and Laurent Begue. B. In this article, the authors link stress and violent video games together by showing that both are related due to the fact that in the violent video games the enemies are trying to kill them which in turn increases stress which makes the players more
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