I’ve been playing video games for the majority of my life. I remember sprawling out on the couch and training Pokemon for hours with my brother. Video games have also been a pretty big part of my social life. Many of the friends that I’ve made I can trace back to our love of video games. They’re a huge part of my life and give me inspiration when I’m out of it. they help relieve stress from the frustration of school, and even make me feel like a hero.

A few months before I was born, video games had come under fire from the media. The Columbine shooting had people pointing fingers at video games due to the shooter’s history with them. According to The Denver Post, one of the original FPS (first person shooters) DOOM was a favorite of shooters and had made the public concerned. Years have passed since Columbine, but the blame on video games still is in the backs of people’s heads. As more shootings happen people continued to point the blame at video games. Even with the most recent shooting, politicians position the blame once again at video games.

Rolling Stones Magazine said that scholars have been researching this topic for years and have found that the correlation between video game violence and real world violence have no connection. There has been repeated test watching for increases in aggression when people are playing a game. The content of how violent the video game is does not matter, it’s the difficulty. Although the same can be said about a lot of things that can work people up and stress them out.

Players have been falsely accused time and time again for practically nothing. We shouldn’t ridicule something we don’t understand. Rather we should try to learn about, not blame it for problems that are out of our control.