Do video games make children and teens violent? Many feel that violent video games are affecting our children and teens. Are video games really a factor in children and teen violence? I think not. Video games are definitely not to blame for children and teen violence. A factor that could cause violence is poor parenting. Violence is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or other. It is also a form of control that includes emotional abuse (Oxford Dictionary). Violence goes back to ancient times. In Roman times a popular form of entertainment was gladiatorial combats. Gladiators fought either to the death, or to first blood, with different weapons. They also used animals, where they combined them with gladiatorial combat. Video games first came about in the 1970s, but it was during the 1990’s that violent games truly came of age. Starting in the 1980s video game producers experimented with what the public would accept in video games. It became clear that games sold better if they contained more violence. In the mid 1980s, children averaged about 4 hours a week playing video games, (Media Violence-Opposing Viewpoints Series) including time spent playing at home and in arcades. By the early 1990s, home video game use had increased and arcade play had decreased. While some studies claim that violent entertainment may be linked in some way to violent behavior, many other studies contradict that assertion. There have been approximately 200 studies on media violence but they have inconsistencies and weak conclusions (Media Violence-Opposing Viewpoints Series). It seems to me that we have shied away from holding people responsible for their behaviors, and instead prefer to seek out easy entities to blame. Events like school shooting tend to make us nervous. We would like to think that such events can be explained, predicted, and