Why do people think that video games cause shootings? Video games have been around since the early 1970s. These massive shootings have only been happening for multiple years now. First Person Shooter (FPS) games were one of the first video games created. Video games don’t cause violence; Instead, they just help people escape the real world and just have fun. It can be for competitiveness, entertainment, or they are just bored and have nothing better to do. People in their right mind don’t play games to plan to hurt people, it’s just a getaway for kids or adults.

People play video games to escape the real world. The people who play video games do this because of multiple reasons. The first reason why people play video games is for entertainment. They play for entertainment because they worked all week and all they want to do is sit back and play games for fun. Another reason why people play video games is they like competition. Some of my friends play video games for money and play competitively, and they make good money off of it. Another reason people play video games it takes them away from their bad or boring life and makes it fun. One of my friends is always on Xbox because he has nothing better to do all day because he only works a part-time job, so he doesn’t get many hours he also doesn’t enjoy going out. People don’t get on and play video games because they are mad and want to kill someone. People don’t get on just to shoot people because they want to do it in real life.

There have been several studies that conclude that violent video games don’t lead to a violent person. Whitney DeCamp and Christopher J. Ferguson, both in the Department of Sociology at Western Michigan University, conducted research about kids who play violent video games and kids who are exposed to a violent family background, and they concluded that “A meta-analysis consolidating these effects indicated that increased time playing violent video games does not significantly affect the risk of violent behavior. Rather, it is the social and familial background that seems to play a larger role in determining the risk of violent behavior instead of video games” (13). In their research, they took all different ethnicities and asked them if they played violent video games, then they ask them if there is parental enforcement, home yelling, home violence, and have been hit by adults. They grouped all the kids who played video games and figured out if they ever hit someone, the children who have been exposed to home violence were the ones that hit people, more than the very little children who play violent video games and hit someone. There is not enough evidence to prove that violent video games are directly correlated to violence within the person.

The whole violent video games cause violence in children and young adults caused by moral panic. A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among many people that some evil threatens the well-being of society; it usually spreads because of the media coverage that it gets, most people watch the news every day. According to Patrick M. Markey professor of psychology at Villanova University and Christopher J. Ferguson a Psychologist “However, it was not until the close of the 1990s after a series of school shootings perpetrated by white suburban kids that “blame the game” really took off” (102). This is a great example of a moral panic the investigators didn’t know why all these kids were shooting other people. So right away because children that played violent video games in the past are used as an example of why they shot all these innocent people because video games encourage rage and violence. In the same article, it states that “The number of published research articles examining video games increased nearly 300 percent in the wake of Columbine” (104). So the media started covering the topic more often. 300 percent more published research articles on violent video games caused this shooting and anger in this child. Just after one shooting, it’s just crazy because the child playing video games didn’t make him violent. It had to do with something at home and not gaming. If it wasn’t for the Columbine shooting, there would still be very few articles on violent video games being the cause of violent kids and young adults. This moral panic made people also think differently about the gaming industry and the government got involved. The government got involved because they started to do more regulations with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) to make Mature-Rated or M-Rated games harder to get by increasing the age to buy them to eighteen years old or have a parent/guardian with you that is above the age of eighteen so they can purchase it.