Throughout my childhood I grew up with video games constantly at my disposal. At a relatively young age, many of those video games that I enjoyed to play featured violent behavior. My brothers and I would play games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto which included high amounts of war and brutality. Looking back on this today, I would say that I am not a violent person But the games played when I was young were also not as advanced as they are today. The children of today are also beginning to be exposed to this genre of video games at an even younger age than ever before. When I am able to see my younger family members, I can’t help but notice that these kids are very aggressive individuals. The linking variable that these young kids have is that they all enjoy to play the same violent video games. With that being said, I sought to answer the question as to whether or not correlation does or does not, in fact, equal causation. Do violent video games make kids more aggressive?
After performing research, it quickly became obvious that violent video games are not linked directly to acts of violence. However, there is still the possibility that they do make minor influences on individuals that could grow over time. One interesting article from Scientific American, revealed that weeks after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, investigators found a GPS in the car of Adam Lanza (the shooter). On that GPS was a location that Lanza would visit every night and stay for hours. Upon arrival, investigators learned that the location was a movie theater, and employees recognized Lanza’s photo. The odd finding was that Lanza never went to watch movies but rather to play a video game. One would think that the game would be a shooting game but oddly enough, the game was Dance Dance Revolution. This is an example of an extremely violent individual who obsessed over playing a video game that is the opposite of a violent game.
Although it is currently accepted that video games do not encourage and aggressive or violent behavior, there is still more studies to be conducted. This is especially important because video games are becoming more realistic each day. In addition, kids are beginning to be exposed to these games at a younger age each year. These young kids with still developing brains regarding the understanding of right and wrong can easily be influenced.
There was one study that was conducted which sought to study the long term effects of exposure to violent video games as well as television. This study found that adolescents who were exposed to violent television were more likely to experience adult aggression. This study included a sample size of 707 families and took place across 17 years. This study also accounted for childhood neglect, family income, neighborhood violence, parental education and psychiatric disorders. This is crucial to the study because it allowed the researchers to eliminate some very strong confounding variables.
Another experiment was conducted at Ohio State University and should be taken into consideration due to its elimination of another variable. Many experiments regarding the link between violent video games and aggression measure aggression immediately after gameplay. While, in contrast, this experiment measured the long term effects. The experiment was conducted by having participants flip a coin determining whether the game they would play for twenty minutes was violent or not. Within each group, half of the participants ruminated about the game. The next day participants competed with an opponent in a competitive task where the winner was allowed to punch the loser with noise blasts with headphones. The results were that violent video games increased aggression even 24 hours after game play but only among men who ruminated. Rumination keeps those thoughts feeling of violence active and the results of this study show that they stick with the player hours after playing games.
boy and a girl playing video game — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
In conclusion, it is currently accepted that violent video games do not trigger aggressive behavior. However, there are still more studies to be conducted of the long term affects of these games. Although there is no evidence supporting the damages of violent games, it should not prevent parents from taking minor courses of action. Simple changes such as limiting children’s playing time and monitoring the games kids are playing can be done to promote overall health. When I was a kid playing outside with my siblings and friends was always much more appealing than sitting inside on a video game. Today, that mindset has changed and kids are choosing to spend entire days inside.
Interesting choice of topic! I wanted to do some further research to assess the validity of your conclusions. I came across a study (link below) that examined adolescents’ attitudes and behavior in response to violent video games. Researchers found that “playing violent video games on the Internet was associated with greater tolerance of violence.” However, they did not find a significant link between violent video games and aggressive behavior. I thought this was interesting because the evidence suggests that playing violent video games does not necessarily lead to acts of aggression, but rather, it leads adolescents who play these games to become more tolerant of these violent images. This is definitely a problem because this evidence supports the notion that violent video games influence adolescents to believe violence is acceptable. Therefore, although violent video games might not directly cause violent behavior, we can conclude that there is evidence to support the notion that they foster unhealthy attitudes when it comes to violence, especially in impressionable adolescents.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9942
This topic is something that I have heard of, and found interesting, since middle school. I grew up playing violent video games here and there but was never allowed to play all of them due to my parents. However, the video games I did play at the time seemed very graphic. As you mentioned, the video games are becoming more and more violently graphic than ever before and the kids are starting at an even younger age. I feel as though children, whose minds are still developing, look to simply mirror whatever is around them. If a child is surrounded by violent video games, I don’t think that means that person will grow up to be violent but it definitely has an effect on the risk. We discussed in class today that risk can be broken down to exposure and hazard. The hazard in these video games is clear, however, I feel that the higher exposure these children are becoming accustomed to is raising their risk of becoming a violent individual.
Video game violence is a dying out trend in the media lately but I think it should be brought back to the table. I remember when games like GTA and Call of Duty came out and I was not allowed to get them because of violence. Granted I was too young to play those games but I still saw many news reports about kids who have killed or committed crimes because of video games. And a simple google search came up with large amount of articles about real life crime from video games. Check out this alarming article of an 8 year old boy who killed because of a game. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/25/us/louisiana-boy-kills-grandmother/