This rhetorical analysis is on the essay Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked by Henry Jenkins.

Henry Jenkins was the director of comparative studies at MIT when this essay was written in 2004. The essay was written on the PBS website The Video Game Revolution, in response to a fear shown by many parents at the time that video games were harmful to the minds of children. This essay was aimed toward PBS viewers, who make up a large portion (I cant find exactly how many) of U.S. citizens (PBS). The article was written to make the most impact with parents of children who play video games. The main goal of this argument is to alleviate fears that playing video games can be harmful to children by showing that the data from studies on the matter show that video games are not harmful. The essay starts off by saying that there is a big difference in the way video games are perceived and what research actually shows us about them. The writer put next that the article is an attempt to separate fact from fiction. Then the essay gives a list of eight commonly accepted beliefs from that time and then disputes them with data from research to prove otherwise.These eight beliefs deal with youth violence, age grouping, social isolation, desensitization of children and moral depravity. The evidence given by the essay refutes these beliefs and portrays them as erroneous. This essay establishes mostly extrinsic ethos through the evidence given to dispute the eight common myths about video games. The intrinsic ethos is established before and after the essay where the webpage shows that Henry Jenkins is both an MIT professor and director of comparative studies at MIT. He also establishes some intrinsic ethos by using himself in his earlier works as a source, although he did not clearly cite where in his essay the earlier works pertained to. He developed extrinsic ethos by using sociologists and psychologists as sources.

These types of scientists are the perfect kind to use for this argument because it deals with the psyche of children as they develop and how video games affect them. The essay makes pathos appeals throughout the argument by trying to give a feeling of relief in that video games are not harmful to children. This is an effective method to use for this audience of parents, who can be overprotective at times. At the very start, he says that the juvenile crime rate is at a thirty year low, which gives that calming feeling to parents. He follows up on this by saying that according to the 2001 surgeon generals report, the children at the highest risk factor for these violent crimes are mentally unstable children with a poor quality home life. Another way he plays on relieving parents is to show them that video games do not isolate their child from social life. This is done in the fourth and seventh paragraphs which show that girls are more included in video games now and that video games are actually a form of social media. He makes a different sort of pathos appeal at one point in this essay. He attempts to make the audience of parents feel chagrined by making them see that they are responsible for what their child/children play. This is primarily in the third paragraph which deals with the marketing of video games. In this he makes the argument that not all video games are marketed to children. There is a growing number of adult gamers in the world now - I am one - and the market is growing to accommodate them. He says that parents should take some of the responsibility for what their children play. He further proves this point by showing that the federal trade commission has found that eighty three percent of video game purchase for minors is made by parents or parents and children together. I found that this makes sense in that minors are not even allowed to purchase rated M games without a parent or guardian with them.

The logos is evident in every part of the essay because it disputes commonly believed notions about what video games do to children and therefore must make the most logical arguments possible. The most logical argument in my opinion is when Henry Jenkins disputes the argument that because video games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the children that play them. In that paragraph he disputes an argument made by former military psychologist David Grossman by saying that Grossmans argument would only work if children were never taught right from wrong and that they had no mind of their own. This was amusing to me and seemed the most logical argument because common sense tells us that, in most cases, Jenkins argument would apply. In conclusion, this essay is an overall effective argument for the intended audience of parents. The essay provides multiple sources of research on different aspects of the effects of video games and uses them to prove the point that this research doesnt condemn video games in any way. It instead show that video games can be beneficial in some cases. The essay also works to alleviate fear in parents over the video games in an effective manner by putting the information into a form that gives parents relief in that their children will not turn into monsters by playing video games. The essay was written by a man who was director of comparative studies at MIT, a fact which in itself gives this argument pull. The same man, Henry Jenkins, did quite a bit of studying in order to write this essay, which is impressive. I myself find this essay to be informative, persuasive and well written. Works Cited: "PBS Overview." PBS. PBS, Oct. 2013. Web. 8 Nov. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/about/background/>.

Jenkins, Henry. "Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked ." The Video Game Revolution. PBS, 2004. Web. 4 Nov. 2013. <http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html>.