Japanese media also took a lot of time and space on TV and in news paper to cover this disaster. I remember that I was shocked by the fact that such young normal people, eventually those two guys might not be "normal," could get guns and shot to death their fellows easily. Japan is relatively safer country and not a gun-prevalent society, so of course I haven't seen real guns and I've never heard that children shot people. I had thought that shooting to kill happened in a virtual world, video games before I heard this news.
Many analysts and professors point out and research bad effects of violent video games on kids' behaviors such as school shootings, and this has been a major controversy for a long time. Here is very interesting research. Two professors showed that violent video games and movies make people unfeeling about the pain. In their study, participants were divided into two groups: one playing a violent video games and the other playing a nonviolent games. After finishing games, participants answer questionnaire. Meanwhile, they heard a loud fight outside the lab, which was expected someone got injured. Participants who played violent games took longer to help injured people than participants who played nonviolent games (Comfortably numb.) I think that the result of this research says that people who play violent video games a lot tend to get numbed to injuring and killing people because they are liable to lose sense of pain. This is understandable. This idea works some different situation. First example is about sense of largeness. I had felt that Hokkaido,
which is located northern Japan, had vast land and straight roads without signals for miles. However, once I get use to Idaho's scenery, I won't feel Hokkaido is large and vast when I go there next time (of course I still love there because there are a lot of green, delicious seafood, and people are kind and friendly. Hokkaido is special place for me!) My sense of largeness may get numb after moving to here in Boise, Idaho. How about money? A few months ago, a Japanese famous pop musician, who was rage of the time and millionaire, was charged of fraud. He spent money even after he was on the wane, and then went into debt so as to keep his level of life. I guess he could not forget good time when he was rich, and could not let down the level of life after he knew good life with a lot of money. Habitation is horrific.
Some media reported that Eric and Dylan had spent a lot of time playing violent video games. Probably they felt nothing while they were shooting, or felt something like "I got 5 points!" Although they had a strong reason which was to pay back at bullies, the idea linking it to shooting easily maybe comes from video games which they liked, Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. This is movie of Wolfenstein 3D.
As you can see this game, objects to shoot are people. Players intend to just kill people to earn points and get high score. I guess two guys felt just playing shooting games in the real world, not a virtual world. Overall, playing violent video games again and again might make people more violent.
*A picture is the veiw from Kaiyodai in Hokkaido. I used to go there for a week by motorcycle with my husband every summar. I miss there.
2 comments:
David,
Hi Reiko,Would you mind to get statistics that eplain how violent games affect people pschologically?
Example:60% of people who play violent games are luckly to become violent in their life.
Another thing you should think about is: why movie makers come up with violent games?
Finally my point of view regarding the violent games is that people who play these games, are not violent because of the game, in contrast the may acquire new strategies on how to protect themselves or the may want to join the army(for children) which is not bad.
David makes a very interesting point about the idea of developing strategies for protection or training for going into the army. For me, personally, I do not need to do those things because at the moment, I live in a pretty peaceful place, and I do not have to join the military. From what I know of Rwanda and some of the violence the country has seen, perhaps it would be very good to know some defense tactics and how to use a gun in order to protect my family. I have never been in a situation where I have even had to fight to solve a problem. I have always been able to talk my way out of things, so violent video games don't really do anything useful for me. However, I can see how they could be useful for people in situations different from mine.
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