Violent Video Games Do Not the Psycopath Make

This will make thousands of "violent game critics" bash their heads against the wall, which is hopefully covered with some substance which will induce some reason into them. A new book called The Trouble With Boys by Peg Tyre takes a new perspective on violent video games and their effect on, specifically, boys.

In her book, she reveals that boys "get expelled from preschool at four times the rates of girls....they are prescribed the lion's share of ADHD medication...get most of the C's and D's in middle school, and they drop out of high school more than girls...."

So what is to be done? Tyre has this to say: "let boys be boys by simply letting them engage in the aggressive fantasies that come to them naturally." Basically playing games like Halo and Battlefield 2142 let boys act out their aggressive impulses in a safe and non-destructive way. It's an important thing for their development and also can help relieve stress. (It also can be beneficial because the games usually will place the gamer in some type of heroic role. You against the enemy: you win, that's great!)

The Trouble With Boys points out that all this craze and stigma against "violent video games" started because of all the school shootings like Columbine and outbreaks of violence in the 1990's, and people adopted sort of a "zero-tolerance policy" towards every type of aggression, even that which comes naturally and can be channeled in better ways. Hopefully society will get over this soon once they open their eyes to the research out there. Violent video games do not an overly aggressive and disturbed child make.

To clear this up for you, the only "violence" that video games are said to induce is create a slight increase in aggression for a couple minutes after playing, largely because of the hormones that excite your brain and get it revved up have been circulating around while you play. This "aggression" will just make it more likely that you will throw your pencil at someone lightly, not make you go into a depression and start massacring people. If someone is already mentally disturbed/ill, then the video games can influence them, as anything can influence those people.

The millions of gamers out there with no record of homicide are living proof to attest to this, as am I and my brother. But what's this? Do I hear a voice in the background yell out "What about Columbine?!" Let me clear that up for you too. The perpatrators of Columbine were already mentally disturbed, Erric Harris was clinically diagnosed as a malevolent psycopath, and Dyland Klebold had this whole other set of problems. The fact that those two people played video games that were "violent" had nothing to do with the massacre, neither did the music they listened to or how they dressed. Many of you may remember what a social paranoia this caused against certain music generas and video games, as well as the goth culture, which Dylan and Erric were not in any way a part of but people for some misguided reason associated them with, but I digress...The point is that video games with violent content, music, and other media were not responsible for the tragedy at Columbine. The only thing responsible for it were two disturbed individuals. Don't believe how messed up they were? Take a look at **this**, it's Harris's journal.

***Warning: suitable only for mature audiences. Contains graphic profanity, strong violence, strong racism, and high levels of objectionable content.