Violent Video Games Creating Violent, Antisocial People?

So, I know I’m not the first person to discuss this. It has been a hot topic for as long as I’ve been alive. Nor am I a world leading psycologist. I’m just here to say that the idea that violent games and films is creating a more voilent sociaty is rubbish, and I am going to tell you why.

First, there are the games and films themselves. Many of them are referred to as ‘violent’, but when you stop and actually look at them, most are not all that bad. I have played my fair share of games, and watched more films than I should have done, and from my experience, the ‘violent’ ones are dominated by fighting/shooting and death. Now, I’m not suggesting that kids of five and six should be seeing that, but in the real world, people fight in the street, people fight wars, and people die every day. Violent games and films are created from a violent world, not the other way round. Remember, people were violent to eachother long before the Xbox.

Then we can take a look back at history. In Medieval England, boys were taught to use bows and arrows by the time they were 13. They never went around shooting arrows into eachother. Roman children were taken to see galdiators fight to the death in arenas. They never tired to stab their parents. And Spartain boys were taught to be warriors from before they could stand. Yet they had one of the most disaplined civilizations of the ancient world. What we see now is no more violent than what we were seeing over two thousand years ago. Indeed, our computer screens and television sets seem rather tame in comparison.

Let me put it this way. Back in 2004, a boy of 14 murdered his father, stepmother and stepsister with a pistol, and later claimed that GTA:Vice City encouraged him to do it. What if he had said his cat encouraged him, or aliens from Jupiter? Would we be chasing them with vengence??