Do Violent Video Games Really Affect Children?Return to Essay List

We live in a world where some of the most heinous crimes are committed by young people. Many people blame video games for the bad behavior of kids. Japanese and American video game makers have been criticized about these games for decades because they have been said to spark a violent impulse in some kids. Do their products promote violent behavior? Are the charges warranted?

Many people in the US feel that violent video games encourage violent behavior. For example, back in 2001 a twelve year old kid from California shot and killed his little brother and when the story broke the first line on many news papers mentioned violent games; however, Henry Jenkins, a professor of media studies at MIT, feels that as a society, we are preoccupied with the scientific and medical authority. He said, “We believe we can subject human culture to a lab experiment and come away with an answer to human behavior.”(www.sfgate.com) Other people feel that the problem comes from a lack of communication between children and their parents. In Japan, a school principal by the name of Keiko Okuchi said that the new wave of violent crimes is a reflection of the frustration and stress of growing up in Japanese society with little recourse to guidance beyond the Internet. (pg1www.ipsnews.net)                           

 Ever since I was young I have always heard that my generation and the one following it are becoming more violent; however, some people feel this is simply something that the media likes to focus on. Duke Ferris, who is the founder of Game Revolution, does not believe video games have an effect on kids and has proof that youth violence has dropped over the last thirty years. He printed three different graphs that show the history of violent crimes committed by kids over the last thirty years which he got directly from the US Department of Justice, Bureaus and Statistics. The graphs also refers to the time when the two first Sony Playstations and Grand Theft Auto 1 and 3 hit the market so that you can visually see if these game machines have had a negative, positive, or any effect on children.

Graphs courtesy of www.fatal1ty.com  

These graphs clearly show that violent crimes are at the lowest point in over thirty years.

Even though violent crimes committed by children may have decreased in some regions of the world, Japan seems to be experiencing the total opposite. In Sasebo Japan an eleven year old girl killed another student. The assailant who was known as a lighthearted sixth grader was first thought to have been hurt until teachers found another girl, Satomi Mitari, lying in a pool of blood. (pg1 www.worldministries.org) What are causing kids who seem to be good kids and have not been violent in the past to commit crimes as heinous as this one? In the last ten years, school yard violence has increased five times in Japan. Not only has violent crimes increased dramatically in Japan, suicide has also increased by 22.1 percent between 1998 and 2003, according to the Washington post.

Many kids in Japan are suffering from hikiomori, which is an extreme behavioral disorder that makes children and young people unable to leave their home or cope with daily life, according to experts. Japan’s top literary prize went to a book called Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara, which is said to be very violent and sexually explicit. Is this proof that to different nations, The United States and Japan, can have different reactions to the same thing and if so for what reason is this difference present.

Japan and the United States are similar in many ways; we are both economically and technologically advanced, we both have a pretty sturdy law system. However, there must be something strikingly different between the two nations. According to Keiki Okuchi, maybe one of the main reasons why children are starting to become so violent in Japan is that they are not listened to or guided the way they should be by parents or guardians. Okuchi states, “They have nobody who listens to their point of view and help them deal with their problems.”(pg.1, www.ipsnews.net) Children look up to their parents from the day they are born and usually have a very strong desire for their parents’ attention. When it is not given, sometimes a variety of symptoms come about.  Japan is not a society that is used to showing affection. Couples, for example, rarely hold hands in public or even say I love you. Children need love and attention from their parents and if they do not get it they will look for it somewhere else or eventually give up.

Does violent media and video game desensitize children? Jeanne B. Funk and three of his colleagues from the University of Toledo write in the Journal of Adolescence, it is very possible. Even though they admit that violent crime has dropped fifteen percent between 1999 and 2004, they said self-reported violent offending by youth in the United States has not declined. They feel that it has not declined because American children are repeatedly exposed to violence and aggressive behavior. They also said it is believed that this may alter a child’s behavioral process; causing them to become violent. To support their opinion, they stated the following, “Video game players actually participate in, and to some extent create the video game actions, rather than simply being a content recipient”. They also said, “Playing violent video games could contribute to the development of pro-violence attitudes because these games normalize violence and desensitize the player to the real-life consequences of violence.”(Pg 26. Journal of Adolescence) To a certain extent I can see how this can have a negative effect on kids. However, the question that I pose is why is it that some kids do what they see on television and video games and some do not. If we can get this question answered, we will have a better idea of how to solve this problem.