John Leo Video Games

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Video games have become a primary aspect of children’s lives. What role has this media occupied, a positive or a negative one? In the article, “When Life Imitates Video,” John Leo argues that video games aid in violent behavior in children. He begins correlating video games with the Colorado massacre and later talks of the Paducah, Kentucky massacre. He quotes a psychologist and retired army officer on the use of “point and shoot” video games being used to break a soldier’s aversion to killing. Throughout the article Leo refers to video games as “video kill games” or “killing games.” This, along with statements like “murder simulators,” back his stance on these games and give his article a dark tone. John Leo is incorrect about the effect of violence on adolescents because he makes questionable claims about video games and their players, the article was written soon after the…show more content…
The Colorado massacre occurred April 20, 1999 and the Paducah, Kentucky massacre occurred December 1, 1997 (K12academics n.p.). The immediate publishing of the article means that John Leo could not have had many details on the massacre in order to make efficient correlations between the shooters and video game playing; he didn’t have all the facts or sufficient statistics to prove the argument. This being such fresh news could result in bias because people wanted to blame the shooting on something, video games being an easy target. Now that time has passed since these massacres, more studies have been done on the correlation between violent video games and school shootings. Another myth that Henry Jenkins wrote about was the lack of scientific evidence linking violent video games with aggression in adolescence. He mentions how even though more than 300 studies have been conducted on media violence, most of them have been critiqued for methodological concerns, are not conclusive, or not contextualized (Finley
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