Do Video Games Really Contribute to Criminal Behaviour.

[Camo]

http://www.pixelperfectmag.com/2011/08/norway-shooting-and-violent-video-games.html

Guys I want to know your opinions, so I'm starting this.

And this will not be turned into a religious topic.

My opinion is that video games have no real contribution to the criminal behaviour displayed by people such as Anders Breviek and that video games are actually a beneficial outlet as to reduce aggression in people. In his 1500 page manifest he says he used COD to train but how can this be applied to real life. Can you quickscope in real life? Of course not.

So guys just throw some opinions around.

[Lasercookie]

No, I do not believe that video games (or films, or books, or rock and roll music) can seriously contribute to crimes like that.

There has to be something more that's wrong with the person that causes them to actually become violent (though my English teacher did say that their was a finding where some of the Nazi leaders were proved to be mentally sane or something like that).

[playsimme]

no - unless a person is delusional they'd be able to differentiate between gaming violence and whats normal in the real world

[Camo]

playsimme, waiting for someone to link that in with mental illnesses :3

[ninwa]

I've been playing shooting games for like 5 years and I haven't killed anyone... yet

*looks at enwiabe*

[Russ]

You've killed me in CSS before nina

And I think they do. Obviously it depends on the mental state of the person, but to deny that violent video games and TV shows etc. have no impact on the likelihood of committing a crime is a stretch. If you can differentiate between reality and fantasy then you'll be (presumably) able to suppress the ideas of theft/murder etc. as morally wrong but playing violent video games probably increases the frequency with which you have to do that.

I checked the literature on this, since it's a fairly controversial area and a few studies have found statistically significant correlations between electronic media usage and violence/criminal activity. That's not to say it's causative (and we'll never know for sure) but I suspect it does have an effect.

On the norway shooting; that guy was already mentally disturbed and COD might have been the tipping point but you can't point to it as the defining factor.