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What Are Violent Video Games Doing To Our Children?

We’ve all heard it. The idea that video games with a high level of brutal, sometime unnecessary violence leads to people commit similar violent acts in real life is not a new one. There are quite a lot of highly publicized cases where extremely violent acts are committed by avid players of violent video games. These correlations led to a great divide in opinions, hence the controversy, where gamers like myself don’t feel like video games make us violent, while people who may not play video games often or at all may come to the logical conclusion that playing violent video games causes violence. However, when looking a little closer at the matter, we can conclude that violent video games do not directly lead to an increase in aggression or violent behavior, but they may have other negative effects such as an increase in depression, addictive behaviors, and other negative mental health effects.

Many political view points in the media and among politicians support the idea that extreme violent behavior in the form of school shootings and other mass shootings are the direct result of violent video games. This seems to be a conclusion jumped to by many looking for an explanation for the horrible acts but there are many studies that disprove this theory by looking at the hard evidence. In an article titled ‘The Impact of Degree of Exposure to Violent Video Games, Family Background, and Other Factors on Youth Violence’, DeCamp and Ferguson (2017) concluded that “the results of this research suggest that caution is still warranted over claiming a relationship between violent video games and violent behavior” (p. 397). It seems that there are many more prominent causes of violence and aggression which agrees with the study’s findings as well. “Rather, it is the social and familial background that seems to play a larger role in determining risk of violent behavior instead of video games. Youth who are witness to actual violence in their home, for example, are at greater risk for acting violently” (p. 397). It could be concluded from this study that it isn’t important what video games we let our children play, as long as they have a healthy family life, right? Well there is still more to it.

Violent video games may not make your children more aggressive or more likely to commit violent acts but that doesn’t mean there are no downsides. There are still other possible negative effects to playing an excessive amount of violent video games. For example, in a study looking at clinicians attitudes and feelings towards the effects of violent video games on youth, Ferguson (2015) found that ”by far, clinicians worried most about the potential addictive effects of video games with a full 61.5 agreeing with concerns about addiction”. Additionally, “Clinicians also commonly worried (47.7%) about the potential for video games to have negative mental health influences on children” (p. 382). What does this mean? It means we should probably be more worried about the addictive and mental health effects that playing an excessive amount of video games can have. Now this is where we start to get contradictory studies. One study from Ferguson (2015) they looked at kids from 12-18 and found that “current results found little evidence for a causal or correlational relationship between violent video game play and behavioral outcomes” and “also found little evidence to support the belief that violent video games may interact with mental health symptoms in some youth” (p. 407). This contradicts another study by Tortolero (2014), they examined the relationship between video games and depressive symptoms and found that “playing high-violence video games for >2 hours per day is significantly associated with having a higher number of depressive symptoms” (p. 612). I believe the key difference between these two studies is the age of the participants of the study. The first study which finds no significant negative effects looked at older individuals from 12-18 while the other than found a correlation between violent video games and depressive symptoms looked at 10 and 11 year olds. Could the age and stage of a child’s development really have that big of an effect on a video game’s influence?

The short answer is yes. Think about how impressionable children are at young ages. How can we expect children to completely separate these virtual worlds from reality when they don’t have the understanding of the world that adults have? So what do we do about it? Do we cut our younger kids off from violent video games? If so, what age do we stop? How do we know what amount of violence is okay and isn’t? Well as it turns out, there is an easy and simple answer to all of these questions. The answer is in the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). They are a non-profit organization that assigns ratings to video games so that parents like you can make smart, informed decisions about what to let your children play and at what age to let them play. In a study comparing some of the major video game rating organizations around the world, by Dogruel and Joeckel (2013) said “despite crucial differences in the set-up of each of the three systems, there is a common understanding on how to regulate video games for children and adolescents in western democracies” (p. 689). Rating companies like these are very effective at what they do and they’ve been doing it for a long time. As it turns out, the true answer was under our noses all along.

References

DeCamp, W., & Ferguson, C. (2017). The Impact of Degree of Exposure to Violent Video Games, Family Background, and Other Factors on Youth Violence. Journal Of Youth & Adolescence, 46(2), 388-400. doi:10.1007/s10964-016-0561-8

Dogruel, L., & Joeckel, S. (2013). Video game rating systems in the US and Europe: Comparing their outcomes. International Communication Gazette, 75(7), 672-692. doi:10.1177/1748048513482539

Ferguson, C. J., Barr, H., Figueroa, G., Foley, K., Gallimore, A., LaQuea, R., & ... Garza, A. (2015). Digital poison? Three studies examining the influence of violent video games on youth. Computers In Human Behavior, 50399-410. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.04.021

Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Clinicians’ attitudes toward video games vary as a function of age, gender and negative beliefs about youth: A sociology of media research approach. Computers In Human Behavior, 52379-386. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.016

Tortolero, S. R., Peskin, M. F., Baumler, E. R., Cuccaro, P. M., Elliott, M. N., Davies, S. L., & ... Schuster, M. A. (2014). Daily Violent Video Game Playing and Depression in Preadolescent Youth. Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 17(9), 609-615. doi:10.1089/cyber.2014.0091