Many People think that violent video games increase the violence level of teens, but I disagree. What I’m trying to say is that a violent video game won’t make a teen want to mug someone.

This makes sense because most teens enjoy games like GTA V (Grand Theft Auto 5) because it’s a game that gives you endless possabilities.

Imagine a teen who just got home from school, he sets his backpack down, walks to his room, turns on his console and loads up Grand Theft Auto 5, then he begins to play, hitting everything in sight. He’s giggling inside at the endless possabilities he has, he could steal a plane, drive off a cliff, or casually drive an army tank through downtown. Each dangerous and fun activity relieves his stress and fills him with thrill and excitement.

The facts don’t lie, according to Zoe Kleinman, a technology reporter from BBC News, “If you play 3 hours of call of duty, you might feel a little pumped, but you are not going to go out and mug someone.” As Zoe Kleinman points out, even if you played a violent video game for a long period of time without stopping, you aren’t going to go out and commit a crime.

According to Sciencedaily.com, “ Researchers in Germany used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on long-term players of violent video games and found that they had the same neural response to emotionally provocative images as non-gamers.” What’s important to notice here is that long-term players of violent video games had the same response to provocative images as the non-gamers did, which shows that the empathy of a person is not affected by violent video games.

According to Susan Scutti from CNN,” Basically, by keeping young males busy with things they like “ — and this would include everything from playing sports and collecting stamps to playing first-person shooter video games — “ you keep them off the streets and out of trouble.” As Susan Scutti stated, if parents keep their children occupied with things like sports and video games, they would be keeping them off the streets and away from crime.

Even though the evidence is overwhelming, there are still people who believe this, “ Individuals who had played violent, compared with non-violent, games were also less likely to report hearing a fight staged outside the laboratory, judged the fight less serious, and were slow to respond when they offered help.” At first, this might seem true, but there are some things that are off. The scientists/company that conducted the study could have paid the test subjects to do what they want to happen, or they could have changed the data. There’s a ton of things they could have done.

As I’ve just proven, violent video games don’t affect the empathy of a person, but rather calm a stressed or aggravated person. Parents always think that M (Mature/18+) rated games make teens violent, that is false. We have a choice to make, we can keep assuming that when a student decides to shoot up a school, they were directed to because he played Call of Duty, and keep making video game giants like Rockstar and Activision look bad because parents assume that every bad choice that a teen makes is because he/she played a violent video game like Call of Duty. Or we can state the evidence and prove that no matter how violent the video game, it wont make someone go out and run around shooting. I hope, for the sake of our entertainment and safety, that humanity make the right choice.