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Playing video games has become one of the most prevalent pastimes for kids as well as adults. Therefore I thought it would be neat to explore some of the ways in which video games can affect our psychology. In this blog post I want to relate an interesting factoid as explained by Dr. James Garbarino (a child psychologist) in his book Lost Boys:

"Until World War II, the military trained soldiers to shoot at bull’s-eye targets. Soldiers could get very good at this, but when a human being was put in a gun sight, many soldiers couldn’t pull the trigger. In fact, 80 percent couldn’t pull the trigger. The military changed the training after World War II, and by the time we were engaged in the Vietnam War, 90 percent of American soldiers were able to shoot their weapon at the enemy. How did the military do this? They did it through desensitization, that is, by training soldiers to shoot at human figures and not at abstract targets like the old-fashioned bull’s-eye.”[1]

Garbarino’s point is that while violent games don’t necessarily make us more hateful towards people, they desensitize us to violence. So in situations where violence presents itself as a real option, there is more potential for that option to be realized.