I started playing video games at a young age. I find enjoyment in playing games and have never had a negative thought about it. It can be addicting but you can break that cycle easily. I read that people think video games are the cause of these school shootings. I myself thought that this was crazy that people are saying this but it is true, people think video games are the cause of these violent acts. I am here to state my opinion on the question 'do video games lead to violence?

When I think of people saying video games lead to violence, I think they are using it as an excuse to blame video games for the shootings. There is absolutely no evidence suggesting that games lead to violence. I have not seen anything to this day that suggests that games are the cause of these school shootings, etc. I think that video games like COD (Call Of Duty)  can trigger violence that the person has but is not the cause of it by any means. Games were made for enjoyment, not the opposite.

When people blame games do they blame all the games like candy crush or games like COD and Halo or battlefield? because there are a lot of different types of games. They are focusing on the entire gaming industry when the games they are talking about are the fps( First Person Shooter) genre. Even then, there's no evidence confirming it causes violence. As a person who plays these games myself, I have never just woken up one day and played COD and was thinking “oh let me go shoot up a school”. That just doesn’t happen for anyone. In this CNN article, a survivor of a school shooting Chris Grady stated “I grew up playing video games … first-person shooter games, and I would never, ever dream of taking the lives of any of my peers.”  This is more evidence that what I said about playing shooter games, especially cod does not encourage violence or shootings. These games are competitive and that's what all these players love because of winning or achievements they may get out of it. 

In addition to fps games can trigger violence, by this, I mean that these people may have been bullied or even around violence and that can most likely be the cause of it all. These false headlines about video games don’t make sense. Video games have many benefits too. You can gain faster reflexes or even become smarter and have a higher IQ just from playing. If they are going to blame games at least blame the right genre they are talking about because Mario or candy crush is not violent.

Moving on, Playing video games is fun. People play games because they get bored and want to have fun or have something to do. Video games also have numerous benefits. You can get stress relief, higher IQ, better reaction times, and just better benefits overall. This would mean video games would actually help society out rather than hurt it. Video games also have many different genres. The ones people should be focused on is the fps genre and that is only a very small percentage of all video games. They need to stop saying video games as a whole because if they do they are saying candy crush is as bad as fps games to them. Not saying that fps games are bad at all. 

Overall, video games do not cause violence in fact they cause more benefits than anything else. Video games are for fun and enjoyment, don't ruin that for all the gamers around the world. I believe if they are going to blame video games they have more evidence presentable because it is easy to blame because games can be very violent. But that doesn’t suggest that it is the cause of all this violence that's happening. If they are going to blame games they should blame movies because they are far more violent and kids or young teenagers could watch them. They have many movies where there's a lot of action and killing but no one is batting an eye over there. Plus the violent games are only a small percentage of a lot of good games out there.