At some point in their lives, everyone has played a video game. Also, most people have played a game that they would consider to be ‘violent. Finally, you, like most people, have probably heard somewhere that video games cause people to be violent in the real world. According to a 2017 survey, roughly 61% of the UK residents that were asked believed that, in some cases, video games can be the cause of aggressive acts, so it is very likely that you would have heard this theory from somewhere. But is it necessarily true? I’m going to discuss my thoughts on the matter today, and the ideas and theories as to why some people think that video games cause violence.

On the eighth of October 1992, an iconic video game was released to the public. Its title was ‘Mortal Combat. It soon became recognized as the ‘first game to feature realistic and graphic violence. Indeed, as most violent games are, this game was instantly the subject of many controversies. In fact, this game’s graphic detail of injury was the reason that the Entertainment Software Rating Board and other rating boards for video games were established. Some would say there was now a moral panic of sorts over the series, which was being hammered in more and more by the outrage and possibly overreaction of the media. Mortal Kombat became an outlet for discontent, something parents could use to excuse their child’s naughty behavior. Sounds stupid, right? Of course, it comes as no surprise that some negative tendencies can be learned from video games (such as fighting in Mortal Kombat), but these effects will only come into play when the child decides to start to use these things in the real world, which in most situations is a very unlikely occurrence. Children don’t want to fight or sell drugs even if they have witnessed it in video games, so it’s unfair to make sweeping generalizations.

In 2019, a study, published by the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Oxford, was carried out. It was one of the most comprehensive and in-depth investigations on the matter at the time. This is because it used a mix of subjective and objective data to come up with their final result about teen aggression and violence due to video games. To further its validity, the study gathered its data from parents and carers, as opposed to relying on information provided by the teenagers themselves. What’s more, the study used the age ratings on the games to indicate the level of violence, as opposed to the player's perception. In total, 2008 subjects were involved in the experiment; the sampling consisted of British 14 - 15-year-olds and an equal number of parents or carers. The study’s results showed… with absolute certainty… no link whatsoever between violence and video games. As this is not the first study to show these kinds of patterns and results, this in-depth study proves that blaming video games for outbreaks of aggression and hatred holds very little weight whatsoever.