Do violent video games cause violent behavior? I believe that violent video games do not cause violent behavior. While I agree that violent video games may desensitize youth to violence, I don't believe the games make the youth more violent than they already are. Its not fair to single handedly blame violent video games, when there are tons of other violent media sources out there.
Karen Sternheimer is a sociologist from the University of Southern California and has been researching the topic since 1999 and she says “Placing the blame on video games exonerates the environment that a child lives in that might nurture violence: poverty, instability, family violence, unemployment, and mental illness, Sternheimer argues.” I agree with her that blaming the games is a cop out and an excuse for the parents and other violent media to not have to take responsibility.
In Sternheimer article titled “Do Video Games Kill?” She says "If we want to understand why young people become homicidal, we need to look beyond the games they play," I agree with Sternheimer here because I think that its safe to say a youth doesn't just suddenly get the urge to go out and start killing people. If people were willing to look beyond face value and beyond how something appears to be. They would see that these kids who become violent might be being bullied, or depressed or have other life things going on that pushed them to the “breaking point” and they just might happen to play a violent video game.
The research that show violent video games causing aggressive behavior are not accurate to how these games are played in real life. Andrew Przybylski and colleagues who wrote an article in the Review of General Psychology say that “most video game experiments only have players play for short periods of time, often for as little as 10 minutes, and violent games tend to be more difficult to learn and have more complex controls than non-violent games, it