Effects of gaming on teenagers

Recently many violent acts have been committed and the media have blamed the violence in the gaming industry. Moral panics ensued after Tyrone Spellman; aged 27 was convicted of a third-degree murder, killing his 17 month old daughter as he was raging over a broken Xbox. Another example is Kendall Anderson, aged 16 who killed his mother by hitting her violently 20 times simply because she took his PlayStation away from him. (1) The gaming industry has been on the increase for years now; the U.S alone makes around 10.1 billion us dollars a year. Because of the mass amount of money made, the video industry is here to stay;

People play games in order to escape from reality. Call of Duty MW2 game was developed by a company called Infinity Ward. Legally the game is aimed at people from the age of 18 above, due to Licensing laws. This is the game contains violent scenes which aren’t fit for younger people. But this isn't the case when it comes to Call of Duty games. This game was a very successful game, within the first 24 hours is sold approximately 4.7 million copies, (2) as the game is rated an 18. Audiences play games for other reasons as well, such as the competition

However the evidence is increasing rapidly. It is important to consider whether the cultivation/culmination theory applies to the gaming industry. Does gaming cause people to turn violent? This theory asks if years and years of watching a female in soaps are mistreated, would we be more accepted to it happening in real life? However this theory is yet to have any concrete proof, that the media texts can change ones behaviours. This theory can be split into two parts, firstly the media exposing violence towards children, causing them to be more tolerant towards them. The second part being the media causing them mentally to be violent towards others and this would be seemed as normal considering it goes unpunished in media text. W.Belson conducted research with males between the ages of 12 to 17, to see how violent they are. He discovered that “Children who tend to watch violent TV programs do become more violent themselves to some extent, largely because violence comes to be seen as a legitimate problem solving device for them.” A lot of the time surveys show that violent people enjoy violent programmes. So how does this relate to my case studies? Firstly there’s been many cases of violent out streaks from gaming, a famous example of this happen on the 11^th February 2009 a multi-million dollar lawsuit was filed in Alabama against the game makers, people claimed that the months of playing the game led a teenager to go on a rampage, killing three men two of which were police officers. Grand Theft Auto is a game which allows you to decapitate police officers, kill them with a sniper, a chainsaw, and even set them on fire. And now the game is at the centre of a civil lawsuit involving the murders of the three men, the murders happened in a small town of Fayette, Ala. The boy who committed the crime was only 18 years old. He was known as Devin Moore, he had played the game for days on end for months. The game industry gave him a cranial menu that popped up in the blink of an eye, in the police station. The menu offered him a split second decision, to kill the officers, shoot them in the end and then flee in a police car. Just as the game trained him to do so. Everyone who was involved in the scene remember these famous words said by Moore, ‘Life is like a video game. Everybody’s got to die some time’.