All you want to know about to death.

Dear editor:

        I recently read the article entitled “ten reasons why violent video game contribute to youth violence” and I felt the urge to point out my disapproval for the ideas expressed in it because I strongly believe there is no relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviour.

        According to the article, “Many of those responsible for mass shootings were found to have played violent video games”, but, it seems that the article forgot to include factors that could have influenced the criminals to commit those crimes, such us; drugs, family, but in particular, mental health. For example, Adam Lanza, 20-year-old shooter, murdered 20 students at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Connecticut. Many theories about how his fanatism for video games led him to shoot came up. However, a cbs news article showed that Lanza was “diagnosed with: autism, anxiety, spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive syndrome and asperger syndrome”, suggesting that his experience playing violent video was not the cause of the shooting, but rather, his mental condition. Mohammad Ghaziuddin, MD, Professor of psychiatry, University of Michigan declared: “reports in the past 2 decades described violent behaviour in persons with ASD/AD” and those persons with “these disorders, especially those with AD are predisposed to violent behaviour”.

        Secondly, the article highlights that gamers tend to have “lower empathy” an are “ less kind”. However, a peer-reviewed study in “Journal of adolescent behaviour” showed that 61.9% of video game players played video games to “help me relax”, 47.8% stated that they “help me forget my problems” and 45.4% to “get my anger out”. Surely, we all agree, that a person who is less stressed, less tense and less angry is more capable of being kind and empathic. In fact, an experimental research by Jose Veladez confirmed that violent video games help “reduce negative mood states”.

        Contrary to what was hypothesized in point 7, I will prove there is no direct relationship between aggressive behaviour and video games, violent or not. In fact, according to…………., video game sales have more that quadrupled, while juvenile crime fell 49.3%. If the hypothesis proposed in the article was applied, juvenile crimes should have increased.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

...