Hello peeps!
As you may have heard recently in the news, President Donald Trump essentially blamed violent movies and video games for why people commit violent acts. I disagree with this ridiculous claim.
We have already beaten this story to death, particularly in the early 90's. The game Mortal Kombat was the center of controversy when questions surfaced about if there was a correlation between children's behavior and entertainment. This basically led to a rating system for video games, like how adult themed movies are categorized.
In an article published by Scientific America they talk about a study done by three researchers: A. Scott Cunningham (University of Baylor), Benjamin Engelstatter (Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany) and Michael R. Ward (University of Texas). They discovered that less crime occurs as more violent video games are sold. They also mentioned that any violent tendencies that are inspired by violent video games is cancelled out because violent people are more attracted to violent video games. They are too busy playing to commit any wrong doing.
This makes sense because I often hear people say that playing video games is their escape. When they are distracted, they are not as likely to make destructive decisions. Personally when I am distracted by things that I enjoy, like video games, I keep negativity out of my mind.
(more good info on violence and video games)
Now, we can look at statistics all day that back up or disprove any correlation between entertainment and human behavior. Any restriction on freedom of expression should be highly scrutinized- yes, video game development is an art and form of expression. It is not that I do not think that something should be done about this problem. The relevant question is giving up our liberties worth shielding ourselves? I think this topic is not a cause for concern and it is just a distraction from the real reason as to why we struggle so much with gun violence.
-Dumb Goomba