Video Games Contribute to a Rise in Underage Drivers
In 2017, according to the Telegraph, underage children were handed more than 1,000 driving bans. It's suggested that video games are the cause of this rise as they’re “giving youngsters the confidence to get behind the wheel”. Obtained by the BBC, figures show that children as young as 12 recieved bans, and 33 disqualifications were issues for those ages 13 and under as states by DVLA statistics. In November 2017, a 15 year old boy caused the deaths of five people when he crashed a stolen car in Leeds after reaching the speed of 88mph.
“There are more and more video games out there now that are able to effectively teach people who to drive” as said by AA President Edmund King. Children are learning to supposedly drive through video games and consoles. With games people can buy clutches, steering wheels, and a break, and its suggested that due to this, when people enter a manual car for the first time, they think they’re able to drive it.
The Telegraph provides a very bias account of the relation between underage driving and video games, and represents video games as negatively- this could be due to the Telegraph has a general right-wing stance in politics. Although they don’t actually proivide any evidence to backup the propsed theory; I cannot find any actual evidence to support the idea of video games causing a rise in underage driving. Considering this fact, I think it cannot be claimed that video games are responsible for the rise and other factors and variable should be taken into account before blame can be placed.
Whilst people would argue against the view point that video games cause an up rise in crimes committed by those who game, Albert Bandura's psychological study showed that children who observed aggressive models would make more imitative aggressive responses to the bobo dolls used in the experiment. This study, alongside his 'media effects' theory; in which the media can directly implant ideas into the audience's minds, and representations of transgressive behaviour in media can lead to individuals imitating those behaviours, can be applied to video games. It suggests that gamers, might find inspiration in the game's avatars and even see them as role models- especially younger gamers. This could cause gamers to adapt to the character's behaviours and even display the same behaviour in real life. However, personally, I believe that extraneous variables, such as the players social life, background and family will have an overriding effect compared to video games, and therefore video games may not be to blame for children trying to drive underage or for mass shootings.
Outside of just underage driving, video games have also been blamed for many other crime rises both from the media and general public. As shown by this chart is the opinions of non-gamers compared to Gamers.
Reference:
The Telegraph . (2018). Underage driving on the rise as video games give 'youngsters the confidence to get behind the wheel'. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/16/underage-driving-rise-video-games-give-youngstersthe-confidence/. Last accessed 20th Feb 2018.
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