Video Game Violence vs. Real Violence in Children

Many, many people know of games such as GTA and Manhunt, where you have the capability to kill people in violent ways. Some people claim that these games lead to violence in youth that play them. I believe these people to be wrong. Here is why -

For one, the number of sales of violent games greatly outnumbers the number of crimes committed. Grand Theft Auto alone  has over thirty million sales in America (http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Grand+Theft+Auto) Granted, not all of these games were children, but let's say about a third of them (ten million) are. In 2011, there were 154000 violent crimes involving juveniles (http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/beh5.asp (first bulletin)). This is far less than the juvenile crime rates in 1993, which, according to the above source, was the peak year of crime rates. Child crime rates are actually going down. Now, taking the number of crimes, dividing it by the ten million or so children may have played and you get .0154. That is less than a tenth of a percent of this group, using only a single popular game. Some may have had exposure to other violent games as well, and some of the perpetrators may have played none.

Granted, there is every once and a while there is someone who does kill people using something they saw in a video game. This is not necessarily the video games fault. Usually these people are mentally unstable and possibly violent already. An excerpt from this article reads -

                 " No doubt, most players don't become violent. That's because they come from good homes, aren't victims of bullying, don't have mental health issues, and don't have many of the other risk factors for violence.

But what about players who already are predisposed to violence? Killers like Aaron Alexis aren't typical. They have a lot going against them, such as mental illness. Violent video games are just one more factor that may be pushing them toward violence."

 Media often chooses to blame the games instead of other potential factors. As much as anything else the high publicity that these events get adds to the violence factors as well.

In my mind, these factors combined show that video game violence does not contribute much to real life violence. However, one should be careful distributing these among mentally ill children. I hope that you at least consider my part of this argument.