Remember, Violence Is Never The Answer!

The topic of violence and young people came up in a class discussion last week. The media often talk about the young generation being heavily influenced by video games. Someone in my class said that they blame video games and films. There are a lot of films and games out there that are mindlessly violent and have no depth to them but I don't think there are a lot of those kind of films that are exposed to the easily influenced.

In my mind the people who are easily influenced by things like games and films are aged 10-12 and I think that is only based on the individual person. There are films that have a lot of violence but it isn't the focus and they are usually rated at 15. The very violent games that have no story or goal other than killing are usually 18 and parents can usually tell when a games rating applies to their child or not.

I don't think playing something violent effects the person playing anyway. People have sense. If there was someone who was already inclined to violence because that is their personality and they picked up on information from a film or game then it isn't the game or films fault.  I have been exposed to films that have violence in them during the most impressionable time of my life and I have never had the urge to use any kind of weapon to harm someone due to something I saw in a film or a game. People are quite good at separating reality and fiction. It's like when someone has a dream about flying they don't think they can fly, same with games and films, if it shows someone flying people aren't going to think they can fly.

Now someone can say that for games, if you are controlling the person who hurts someone then you get used to the mindset of hurting. This depends on the person playing and the game. I have always thought that video games is an art form (it's something my boyfriend believes in strongly) and I thought of as fact, but there are games who only care about realism and shooting. These are the games that may influence someone who already has done something violent. Films, which is what my colleague was arguing most,  usually aren't designed to put the person watching into the mindset of a killer so it's just like having a dream. You know what is real and what isn't. Now I think that a film made to put into the mindset of a killer would be a very interesting thing to watch for "shocking" purposes. If there is one out there that any of you readers know of, please drop a comment with the film name.

Now if I go on this will be too long and I'd probably start repeating myself a bit, so although I have many other thoughts and feelings on this, I can't put them into words so I'll bid you goodbye as this is the end of my post.
Rain

*Edit 27.5.13  *
I was talking vaguely about this with my boyfriend recently and  he had some very interesting points so I asked him to write some of this down because, well I  hate to say it,  but he's pretty smart and an expert in both games and films.