One study says yes, the next one says no. Guess the researchers need to duke it out in a deathmatch.
Study: Kids Unaffected by Violent Games
According to a new study, violent video games only influence the behavior of children who already show aggressive or violent tendencies. This directly refutes other recent studies that have linked the playing of violent video games with increased negativity and violence in kids. Kind of makes you wonder if anybody knows what they’re talking about, doesn’t it?
The study, conducted by the Swinburne University of Technology, which examined 120 children aged 11 to 15 years old, had the kids play Quake II for twenty minutes. The neurotic kids were wound up and aggressive after playing, but the more even-keeled kids came out the same way they went in. Sounds shockingly like common sense to me, but, then, I don’t have a PhD after my name, so what do I know? Interestingly, hyperactive children were more calm after playing. Professor Grant Devilly had this advice:
“You’ve got to basically read your own kid. If you have a quite hyper kid they will come down after playing a bit, but for the rest of kids, the vast majority, it makes no difference at all in their general aggression rate.”
Whaaaat? Suggesting that parents actually pay attention to their kids? Tsk, tsk…you won’t go far suggesting that kind of craziness, Grant!
Isn’t this like lung cancer or global warming? Vested interests want to muddy the waters by citing this off-study or that one. But the bulk of the data does link behavioral problems with violence in media.
OK, computer games are a relatively new medium so there aren’t as many studies… but common sense tells us that high exposure to simulated violence is going to have a shaping impact on the viewer/participant.
(Now PLEASE nobody counter me with a statement like, “Playing Doom does NOT automatically turn someone into a serial killer!!!” The studies don’t claim anything like that and I’m not saying it either.)
Long live Quake II.
i tend to think it has alot to do with the individual and their present state of mind. i play violent video games all the time, and at times of my life where i have been extremely stressed out i did find myself becoming shockingly aggressive and violent, and i would get easily frustrated in the game if i kept dying, and i would experience moments in everyday life where i wanted to act out violently, like waiting in traffic or in a line at the grocery store, or if someone cut me off in traffic or something. but at times of my life when everything is just fine and i dont feel that stress, the video games have no affect on me. i can kill a thousand guys in the game or kill one and it doesnt matter. i can wait 5 seconds in traffic or 5 minutes and it doesnt matter.
if a kid is acting out violently i doubt it has much to do with the video game itself, though the video game may encourage an already budding violent or aggressive attitude. i think we should stop and see why the child feels so violent or aggressive in the furst place. it could be stress from school, maybe they are being ostracized or picked on and want to somehow express their anger and hurt, or maybe there is a problem in the family. kids feel more stress now i think then they ever have before within our society so i dont think its unnatural for us to see them having more of these problems and just not knowing what to do with these emotions.
however, like the increasing amount of sex in our lives, violence is just a part of it we all have to deal with eventually. wheather its from a video game, from abuse in the household, from tv or movies or from experiencing it first hand at school a kids gonna be exposed to it, so to say video games is the cause is just ridiculous.
120 is an awfully small sample. Also, this study is in only one geographical area, in Aussie-Town. Aussies are cool and all, but their culture doesn’t exactly mirror american life. To make any clear political stance on this stuff, I would figure at least 1,000 children, sampled from many cultures and from many places. The articles don’t link to the real published work so I don’t know if they looked at sex differences or anything else. Seems like student work to me.
I bet these newly formed SPEC-OPS teams played a lot of Quake II growing up (http://tinyurl.com/2vavo2). Actually, probably not, but I can’t help to plug for the Iraqi Military.
“According to a new study, violent video games only influence the behavior of children who already show aggressive or violent tendencies.”
Why is this not obvious to everyone!!!! If playing a video game can drastically influence the moral behavior of a person then that person would be capable of that behavior already! If this were true, playing organized contact sports like hockey would do the same thing. Very similar to the old saying that you can’t hypnotize someone to do something dramatically against their moral system. And before someone says it, playing a video game is not the same as the brainwashing done to certain prisoners of war.
Quake ][? That’s so passe…
Get WORLD OF PADMAN !!!! It runs on the Quake THREE engine, and it’s free! 🙂 550 Megs or so, just released yesterday.
“I’d like to shoot the people who think this stuff affects me.” — Calvin and Hobbes.
“I’ve been playing violent video games for years and haven’t killed many people because of it.” — John Romero (if memory serves)
I don’t care how many ppl put the “Medal of honor” game series on a pedestal, to me any FPS game where the only thing the characters do when a bomb lands on them is faint is not worth the effort.
I can’t wait for LucasArts to release games with the Euphoria game engine; that way I can see if I can shoot the MFs who still cling on the edge of the walls.