Using the dot points for the policy debate exercise in this week’s tutorial, I’m going to be looking at the issue of violent video games. Most people associate this issue with the mass shooting such as Columbine, Sandy Hook and many others that have occurred. Many claim that violent video games are to blame for their actions which are inherently false as there are many more underlying harder to address issues such as domestic violence, equality and society as a whole that are the cause for this.
The type of policy that could be debated here is a restriction on violent video games and an eventual ban all the violent video games for under 18’s. The challenges that are being faced here though are that many media experts such as Sue Turnbull have said that there is no direct link between violent behaviour and video games. This debate involves a large portion of the community as gaming is now a popular activity these days and many households and parents in particular play video games themselves. The producers who develop and market these games are also concerned by this debate as they could potentially be out of a job should things get worse.
Many gaming organisations and gamers are all concerned with this problem as its only a very small amount of people that are spoiling it for the rest of them and in order to decide an outcome there should be equal representation and opinion between the gamers and the politicians who could create this policy. The best likely outcome would be that video games be ruled out completely for the sole cause of mass shootings as there is no hard evidence that say they are responsibly.
below are a couple of arguments that refer to sandy hook and video games.
danielbarrett53 