Violence and videogames - To furthermore add to PJK's post

In response to the blog post made by PJK ('Violence in Videogames and Violence in Reality' - 29/01/12), I would like to add to the points he/she makes. PJK suggests that videogames do not cause people to act violently or commit crimes – “Through this, the fact that people commit crimes cannot be seen as due to videogames.”

I do agree with this. Violence is separate from videogames, and videogames should be seen as the SYMPTOM NOT THE CAUSE (as Kevin suggested in the lecture).

By saying they are a symptom we are suggesting that people use may use videogames as a reaction to the problems they might have in their lives. A symptom (playing videogames) of the cause (the pre-existent problem).

With that being said, perhaps videogames do help foster some of the pre-existent violent tendencies that people may already have. If someone is innately more susceptible to becoming a violent person then violent videogames are probably a good way to help this person express these feelings and perhaps even train them!

But is that a bad thing? Maybe this is a good outlet for these people then? Instead of hurting people in real life maybe videogames is a good way for these innately violent people to express their anger/violent antics in a healthy way, rather than hurting real people?

Or maybe the really violent ones will still go out of their way to hurt real people/commit crimes in real life.

It’s hard to say.

But for now, we cannot blame the videogames – they are the SYMPTOM NOT THE CAUSE!