Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression

Grace Shin's article, "Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression," is a great example of logos. She shares many facts and statistics to prove that video games cause an increase of violence and aggression in children.

In the first paragraph, shares a study which was conducted to show how often teenagers play video games a week. The study shows that "almost a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week." Shin continues in explaining that many of these video games are "bloody, shoot-em'-up video games," which have a lasting effect on all people. She uses the example of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two boys responsible for the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. These boys loved the video game "Doom," which is a game that was liscensed by the United States Military to teach soldiers how to effectively shoot weapons. They created their own version of the game, which they displayed in a class project, in which two people were dressed in trench coats, and they went and shot all of the athletes in the school. Less than a year later, they performed the same shooting which they had planned in their version of the game.

The article continues in sharing studies conducted to prove that violent video games cause increased aggression. Calvert and Tan conducted a study in which they compared the effects of playing violent video games versus watching someone else play violent video games. The results showed that people who played violent video games had "an increased heart rate, reported more feelings of dizziness and nausea, and exhibited more aggressive thoughts." Another study conducted with second-grade boys compared the effect of violent versus non-violent video games. After these second-graders played these violent video games, the exhibited increased aggression in their free play time, while those who played non-violent video games did not show signs on aggression.

Each of these studies and facts were used to show that video games do cause increased aggression.