Doubting/Believing

Ahmad Rifai

Professor D. Adra

English 203

October 21, 2015

Doubting/Believing

Video gaming is slow becoming an integral part in our young generations lives, internet cafe’s have become a sort of a social center for children and adults alike to go and enjoy playing the games they love while socializing. One of the most popular genre of games played in these social hubs are action games such as counter strike, call of duty, and GTA. All these popular violent video games eventually sprung up heated controversy between people saying they do make children more aggressive, and others saying they don’t. Brad Busman argues that playing an excess amount of violent video games, along with other mental and social problems can create a bad cocktail that would damage young teens such as Aaron Alexis, and turn them into killers. I personally do not believe this is true. If anything playing video games, violent or non-violent, could be the only escape young teens such as Aaron have from their problems. It gives them something to enjoy in their life and to help ease their mind from whats happening around them. Video games are known to help stimulate the reward system in your brain when ever you achieve something or do something impressive in a game, this reward system would make you feel happy and at ease and could even boost your self esteem.

But what i do have to agree about with the author is that playing violent video games can make the player tend to be a little more aggressive, but of course not to the point of committing a mass murder. Ive personally noticed how playing some games such as GTA would make me a little more angry towards problems in my life, but of course it wouldn't make me go all psycho and wish to kill everything. Even with mental illness and problems I do not believe that playing any of these video games would make a person do what Aaron did.

Work Cited:

Bushman, Brad. "Opinion: Do Violent Video Games Play a Role in Shootings? - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.