Second Strongest Argument

My second strongest argument for my topic on video games is that they increase violent behavior. Since video games actually do retrain the player's brain, they can also teach the player how to be violent. Many school shootings have resulted from too much video game playing. For example, the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, committed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were a result of their addiction to video games. They had released a video to the public on the Internet prior to the shootings. One of them, during the video, is holding a rifle with the top sawed off. The person is rocking with the rifle back and forth as if they are nurturing it. This is an extreme example of how video games can cause violent behavior. The fact that video games can produce violent behavior, is relative to the amount of violence present in a game. Many games nowadays have an increasing amount of violence, which thus makes violence seem a normal part of everyday life. Video games like Doom are actually used by the Marine Corps to train their soldiers to kill.

Part of the reason why video games are so violent is actually because their creators do not realize their violent potential. One video game creator, John Carmack, thinks of his video game, Quake, as "a game of Cowboys and Indians with visual effects." Another problem is that, with video games, the player is not held responsible for their actions, thus the violent behavior executed in video games has no consequences. Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, former Professor of Psychology at West Point, states that video games "are murder simulators which over time, teach a person how to look another person in the eye and snuff their life out." So, video games have an incredible potential to produce violent behavior, and thus increase the amount of violence acceptable in everyday life situations. Something needs to be done about this now, before it is too late (and it may already be).