One of a Million

When someone commits a crime, it is very easy for the government or parents to blame video games, because they are not associated with them. The fact of the matter is, violent video games are only one out of many sources of increasing aggression, and it is not even one that is directly correlated with criminal activity. If people would dig deeper, they would find that the those who would easily blame video games and other media for mass murders and other crimes, almost have a motive to. An individual’s environment, upbringing, and society have huge impacts on their level of aggression, and as such, also can contribute to criminal activity.

A huge topic of debate is whether or not the way society in the United States is structured puts many people at a disadvantage to excel. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant, but if people who are at the lower end of the spectrum are more prone to violence, it would definitely not help the government’s case. Unfortunately for them, an experiment performed by Tobias Greitemeyer and Christina Sagioglou proves that people of a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be aggressive than those of a higher status. This proves that just being from a poor or even middle class family might make one aggressive. The need for money might even cause someone to rob a bank, murder someone, or some other crime.

Furthermore, Jennifer Welsh wrote about a study by Michael Lorber which discovered that an aggressive personality can be formed due to negative parenting when a child is still an infant. Since a baby is very impressionable, a parent’s negative treatment towards the child and around the child can assist in building a violent mind that could later commit crimes.

To get to the point, violent video games are a proven cause of aggressive behavior in people, but it is not the only cause. Besides the ones mentioned, there are other reasons for increasing aggressive behavior, some of which are not flattering for various groups of people. If attention was put on the society or parenting as a form of increasing aggression, it might make the government or parents very concerned for their own image. To counter this, they put all of the attention on interactive media.

However, some might say that while there are other causes of aggression, violent video games as a cause is the most noteworthy one, because it allows a player to control the actions and desensitize them through that. If a cause of aggression is to be considered more effective than another one, then there should be some way of identifying that. An easy argument would be that crime clearly comes from playing violent video games. That argument holds little water when a study by the American Psychological Association shows that while it has been proven that games do increase aggression, there is an inability to clearly correlate these aggressive behaviors to criminal activity, especially since aggression takes on many forms, some of which are not even physical. In the end, someone who committing a crime due to their socioeconomic status seems more apparent since they are obviously poor and have a more clear motive.

In conclusion, things such as parenting and social status are just as much a cause of aggression as violent video games. This opens the door for tons of other possible causes of violent behavior. Video games may be correlated to increasing aggression, but they are hardly the core cause of it, and more so, only play as a factor among other causes.

Works Cited

Greitemeyer, Tobias, and Christina Sagioglou. “Subjective Socioeconomic Status Causes Aggression: A Test Of The Theory Of Social Deprivation.” Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology 111.2 (2016): 178-194. PsycARTICLES. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

Welsh, Jennifer. “‘Negative Parenting’ Starts Aggressive Personalities Early.” Live Science. N.p., 26 Oct. 2011. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.

American Psychological Association. American Psychological Association, 13 Aug. 2015. Web. 30 Oct. 2016.