Are You Sure About Those Arguments?

In his article “Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked,” Jenkins makes his argument that video games are bad for you by disputing the fallacies used by the opposite view point.

The first “myth” that he takes on is the claim that “The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.” Jenkins counters this claim by stating that this conclusion was reached through a mixing of a post hoc fallacy and sweeping generalization. He reasons that increased violence cannot be blamed on the amount of video games on the market and though it is true that the majority of young people who have committed violent shooting are gamers, gamers are more likely to be younger and most of them have NOT committed violent crimes.

Jenkins then attacks the argument that “scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression,” by saying that this claim is based off of insufficient evidence and is therefore an invalid argument. This appeal to ignorance assumes that people will believe anything that has the tag of “scientific” placed on it. In order for scientific evidence to be regarded as fact it must be tested and verified to the extent that the conclusions are virtually irrefutable. Jenkins adds that correlation does not cause causation; just because people that play violent video games are aggressive does not mean that video games makes people aggressive, it could just be that aggressive people like to play aggressive video games.

Another claim used to support anti-video game agenda is that “because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.” This argument is an oversimplification and implies a slippery slope. Jenkins contests this argument by explaining the difference between military use of games and civilian use of games. When the military uses games they have specific and defines goals in mind and play them “in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted.” If children who play video games are being “conditioned” to be aggressive and violent then it must be assumed that training and education are detached from “a meaningful and cultural context,” gamers have no goals and no resistance to being taught, and that gamers automatically and subconsciously apply what they are taught in virtual reality to actual reality, all three of which cannot be assumed automatically .