speech on do video games promote violence

A Speech on Do Video Games Promote Violence?

A very warm welcome to one and all present here. Today, I have taken it upon myself to address you all regarding the various aspects that promote violence. In the light of the recent events it has become a necessity to address these issues at its roots. Violence has become an issue that needs to be eradicated but it has proven that no one nation is able to keep this control.

From organised terrorist activities to random incidents of gun violence, this issue has caught the world in its clutches and is making it harder for each country to ensure safety to its citizens.  When a violent crime occurs and people are trying to make sense out of the chaos, most of them find reasons as to why this happened in the first place. Most people are quick to point fingers at the violence depicted in the video games and use it to answer the questions in their minds.

Video games have been in mainstream entertainment since the 1970’s and yet it wasn’t blamed for violence until lately and keeping this mind I would like to say that I don’t think that video games promote violence. Video games, on the other hand, cause problems in behavioural patterns and even if it may seem like it glorifies gun violence and other forms of violence, studies have shown that criminals don’t get influenced and provoked to use these methods when exposed to video games and rather it is issues like child abuse and sexual abuse that leads these people to take up this extreme method.

Video games acts as an facade that can be blamed for the violent crimes that is happening, because we as a community or we as a society fail to recognise and does not prefer to address the issues like child abuse and sexual abuse because addressing them might bring out some real stories that are bound to make all of us uncomfortable, and we choose to blame it on video games as it is easier for us to blame something that is in the mainstream.

Since video games are already considered to be mainstream there is no need for a real discussion before branding it as the “real reason” behind the increased number of violent crimes in the country whereas the real and actual reasons are hiding in plain sight and pulling them out means addressing the places where we failed as a country.

Even though television and other media also portrays violence, the case of video games is considered to be a more serious problem as it includes role playing and is quite interactive. It is considered to encourage children to express their ideas in violent scenarios and this is believed to pressure children into thinking like a violent person whereas it can be caused by any depiction of violence in television as well. In conclusion, there is no scientific proof regarding how video games promote violence and it is high time that we address the same.

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Do Video Games Promote Violence? Answered by Research

There is a lot of debate about whether video games promote violence or not. Many experts believe that video games that encourage violence bring out violent tendencies in gamers. However, research has a clear answer.

Several studies have shown that video games increase aggression. Over the past five decades, studies have shown that engaging with violent media, including playing violent video games, increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior. However, aggressive behavior does not always lead to real-world violence and crime. Moreover, there are other more significant risk factors for real-world violence, than violent video games.

In this blog post, we will examine studies on whether video games promote violence or not, what experts think, and how video games affect the brain.

 If you are worried about someone's relationship with video games, take this quiz to gain more insight into why they play games:

Where Did We Get the Idea That Video Games Promote Violence?

Can playing video games lead to violence?

Even before video games existed, the idea that violent media results in violent behavior in youth was widely debated. People and news media often blamed television shows and movies with violent graphic scenes for the youth’s violent acts. In fact, over the past 50 years, researchers have conducted many studies that show that watching violent television, watching violent films, or playing violent video games increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior.

Anderson and co. published a comprehensive meta-analysis of the effects of violent video games. They concluded that the “evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increase in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect and decrease in empathy and prosocial behavior.”

However, Anderson says that violent media, including video games, are only among the many risk factors for aggressive and violent behavior. A healthy, well-adjusted person who gets exposed to a few risk factors, including violent video games, will not suddenly become a criminal. However, there is an impact of video games on aggression and anti-social behavior.

Click here to check out the parent’s guide to managing a short-tempered child/

Let’s discuss how violent video games affect your child’s brain and what you can do to wean your child off violent video games.

How Do Video Games Affect the Brain

Video games affect the brain in multiple ways. They affect our learning circuitry, emotional circuitry, and a psychological pattern called the triumph circuit. You can learn more about how video games affect the brain in this article. For now, we will go over the correlation between video games and violent behavior.

Numerous studies show that exposure to violent video games leads to a significant increase in aggression. Moreover, young men who are already prone to aggression are especially vulnerable to video games’ aggression-enhancing effects.

Some studies have tried to contest this finding. For example, Kuhn et al. conducted a longitudinal study that took a sample of 90 college students and divided them into three groups. For two months, one group played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, one played the generally considered prosocial game Sims 3, and one played no games. The researchers found no statistically significant changes in aggressive behavior among the three groups after two months.

However, it is essential to note that this study’s sample size was too small (90 initial participants, others dropping out further into the study). The mean age was 28, and more than half of the participants were women. That is much different from the young, 18 to 25-year-old males that are typically at risk of increased aggression from exposure to violent video games. Moreover, the participants were only advised to play for at least 30 minutes a day, which does not seem to be enough for a statistically significant behavior change, even over two months. Other studies that show similar results suffer from similar methodological issues.

All gamers know the surge of adrenaline that they experience when they find themselves in high-stress gameplay situations. The research backs this up — studies have found that video games trigger the fight-or-flight response, which causes the release of adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones prepare your body for high-stress situations by:

• Dilating your pupils to let in more light and thus, improve your vision.
• Blood flow to extremities gets reduced while blood flow to the muscles, brain, legs, and arms increases.
• The heartbeat and breathing rate increases to provide more oxygen to other parts of the body, to fuel its sudden increase in demand for fuel.
• The muscles tense and become primed for quick movement, which results in trembling.

The fight-or-flight response evolved to combat physical dangers. However, our minds and bodies cannot distinguish between real danger (an attack from a tiger) and fake danger (death in a video game). Therefore, the response is the same in either case. The body is not designed to sustain this response for hours. The fight or flight response is designed to kick in and help you get to safety and then turn off. However, when gamers play intense, violent video games for several hours, the fight-or-flight response stays “on” the entire duration. It results in prolonged secretion of adrenaline and cortisol.

Over time, persistent surges of adrenaline can damage your blood vessels , increase your blood pressure, and elevate your risk of heart attacks or stroke. It can also result in anxiety, weight gain, headaches, and insomnia.

Emotional Suppression

The amygdala is the part of our brain that governs negative emotions such as fear, anger, shame, etc. fMRI studies have shown that when we experience negative emotions and turn on a video game, the activity in the amygdala reduces. Therefore, video games suppress negative emotions.

Over time, this results in the development of a sub-clinical condition called alexithymia. Alexithymia is the inability to determine your inner emotional state. Men are especially susceptible to developing alexithymia. That is because societally, they are only encouraged to display anger.

When we suppress negative emotions such as fear, shame, and frustration, they don’t just vanish. They lie dormant and often come out during intense gaming sessions in the form of anger. That is one reason for gamer rage being so commonplace and possibly why video games increase aggression.

Do Violent Video Games Affect Children?

Children pick up behaviors through a process called observational learning. Overall, if your child gets exposed to many violent games, they are likely to develop some aggressive behaviors, especially if they play video games excessively.

Click here to check out this article on how to reduce your child’s time spent playing video games.

For kids and teens 5 to 18 years, experts recommend that parents place limits on time spent playing video games. Gaming should not take up time that would otherwise go towards getting enough sleep and physical activity. Parents should set limits on their kid’s gaming hours to keep gaming from affecting their schoolwork, chores, and physical activity.

Additionally, parents should also make sure that their child is playing video games suitable for their age group.

Entertainment Software Rating Board rates and labels all video games. Steer clear of any games they rate “M” for “mature.” Those are for ages 17 and up, and can contain heavy-duty violence, strong language, and sexual content. Also, keep in mind that even games that are “suitable for children” may contain cartoon violence.

Whether your child will become violent as a result of playing violent video games is not known. However, James Ivory, professor and researcher , says that when it comes to actual serious criminal violence, there’s virtually no evidence that video games matter.” Instead, other predictors of violent crime such as poverty, substance abuse, and child abuse seem to be much more relevant.

What if My Child Plays Excessive Video Games?

If your child or teenager struggles to reduce their gaming habit, then we can help. Ultimately, the most successful path forward to overcome video game addiction for 90% of kids is to become a healthy gamer. Building a healthy relationship with them and helping them overcome their video game addiction can reduce the effects of video games that promote violence.

Healthy Gamer Parent Coaching is a 12-week virtual coaching solution created by Dr. Alok Kanojia, known as Dr. K, the world expert on video game psychology. It covers the most frustrating, difficult, and common dynamics around excessive gaming.

• 12 Weeks of Parent Coaching: Work with your Healthy Gamer Coach in a group format with up to 5 other families to develop strategies and reflect on progress and setbacks in a supportive environment.
• 12 Learning Modules: Cover key concepts of gamer psychology, parent-child communication, and boundary-setting to create an alliance with your child.
• Approach your child’s unique circumstances and psychology in weekly 90-minute Parent Coaching Sessions with a Healthy Gamer Coach.

For 12 consecutive weeks, participants get access to a workshop and Q&A with Dr. K and weekly support groups led by Healthy Gamer Coaches. The dual support structure helps parents get started and follow-through in helping their children combat excessive gaming.

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Do Video Games Influence Violent Behavior?

By:  Roanna Cooper, MA and Marc Zimmerman, PhD, MI-YVPC Director

An op-ed article appeared recently in the The New York Times  discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down California’s law barring the sale or rental of violent video games to people under 18.  The author, Dr. Cheryl Olson,   describes how the proposed law was based on the erroneous assumption that such games influence violent behavior in real life.

Dr. Olson suggests that the deliberately outrageous nature of violent games, though disturbing, makes them easily discernible from real life and suggests that the interactivity could potentially make such games less harmful.

She raises the question of how these two behaviors can be linked if youth violence has declined over the last several years while violent video game playing has increased significantly during the same period.

This analysis ignores the fact that such variation may be explained by factors other than the link between the two. A spurious variable–a third variable that explains the relationship between two other variables—may explain the negative correlation of video game playing and violent behavior. As one example, socioeconomic status may explain both a decline in violent behavior and an increase in video game playing. More affluent youth have the means and time to buy and play video games, which keeps them safely inside while avoiding potentially violent interactions on the street.  Dr. Olsen also cites several studies that have failed to show a connection between violent video game playing and violent behavior among youth.

This conclusion, however, may not be as clear cut as it appears.

Youth violence remains a significant public health issue

The decline of youth violence notwithstanding, it remains a significant public health issue that requires attention.Youth homicide remains the number one cause of death for African-American youth between 14 and 24 years old, and the number two cause for all children in this age group. Furthermore, the proportion of youth admitting to having committed various violent acts within the previous 12 months has remained steady or even increased somewhat in recent years ( http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/5/1222.full.pdf+html ).  Although the Columbine tragedy and others like it make the headlines, youth are killed everyday by the hands of another.  A more critical analysis of the link between video game playing and violence is necessary for fully understanding a complex problem like youth violent behavior that has many causes and correlates.

Studies support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

Researchers have reported experimental evidence linking violent video games to more aggressive behavior, particularly as it relates to children who are at more sensitive stages in their socialization.  These effects have been found to be particularly profound in the case of child-initiated virtual violence.

• In one study, 161 9- to 12-year olds and 354 college students were randomly assigned to play either a violent or nonviolent video game.  The participants subsequently played another computer game in which they set punishment levels to be delivered to another person participating in the study (they were not actually administered).  Information was also gathered on each participant’s recent history of violent behavior; habitual video game, television, and move habits, and several other control variables.  The authors reported three main findings: 1) participants who played one of violent video games would choose to punish their opponents with significantly more high-noise blasts than those who played the nonviolent games; 2) habitual exposure to violent media was associated with higher levels of recent violent behavior; and 3) interactive forms of media violence were more strongly related to violent behavior than exposure to non-interactive media violence.
• The second study was a cross-sectional correlational study of media habits, aggression-related individual difference variables, and aggressive behaviors of an adolescent population.  High school students (N=189) completed surveys about their violent TV, movie, and video game exposure, attitudes towards violence, and perceived norms about violent behavior and personality traits.  After statistically controlling for sex, total screen time and aggressive beliefs and attitudes, the authors found that playing violent video games predicted heightened physically aggressive behavior and violent behavior in the real world in a long-term context.
• In a third study, Anderson et al. conducted a longitudinal study of elementary school students to examine if violent video game exposure resulted in increases in aggressive behavior over time.  Surveys were given to 430 third, fourth, and fifth graders, their peers, and their teachers at two times during a school year.  The survey assessed both media habits and their attitudes about violence.  Results indicated that children who played more violent video games early in a school year changed to see the world in a more aggressive way and also changed to become more verbally and physically aggressive later in the school year.  Changes in attitude were noticed by both peers and teachers.
• Bushman and Huesmann, in a 2006 Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine article , examined effect size estimates using meta-analysis to look at the short- and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults.  They reported a positive relationship between exposure to media violence and subsequent aggressive behavior, aggressive ideas, arousal, and anger across the studies they examined.  Consistent with the theory that long-term effects require the learning of beliefs and that young minds can easier encode new scripts via observational learning, they found that the long-term effects were greater for children.
• In a more recent review, Anderson et al. (2010) also analyzed 136 studies representing 130,296 participants from several countries.  These included experimental laboratory work, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal studies.  Overall, they found consistent associations between playing violent video games and many measures of aggression, including self, teacher and parent reports of aggressive behavior.  Although the correlations were not high (r=0.17-0.20), they are typical for psychological studies in general and comparable with other risk factors for youth violence suggested in the 2001 Surgeon General’s Report on youth violence .

Violent video games may increase precursors to violent behavior, such as bullying

Although playing violent video games may not necessarily determine violent or aggressive behavior, it may increase precursors to violent behavior.  In fact, Dr. Olson points out that violent video games may be related to bullying, which researchers have found to be a risk factor for more serious violent behavior. Therefore, video game playing may have an indirect effect on violent behavior by increasing risk factors for it.  Doug Gentile notes that the only way for violent video games to affect serious criminal violence statistics is if they were the primary predictor of crime, which they may not be.  Rather, they represent one risk factor among many for aggression ( http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/virtual-violence.aspx ).

Should video games be regulated?

L. Rowell Huesmann (2010) points out that violent video game playing may be similar to other public health threats such as exposure to cigarette smoke and led based paint .  Despite not being guaranteed, the probability of lung cancer from smoking or intelligence deficits from lead exposure is increased.  Nevertheless, we have laws controlling cigarette sales to minors and the use of lead-based paint (and other lead-based products such as gasoline) because it is a risk factor for negative health outcomes.  Huesmann argues the same analysis could be applied to video game exposure.  Although exposure to violent video games is not the sole factor contributing to aggression and violence among children and adolescents, it is a contributing risk factor that is modifiable.

Violent behavior is determined by many factors

Finally, most researchers would agree that violent behavior is determined by many factors which may combine in different ways for different youth. These factors involve neighborhoods, families, peers, and individual traits and behaviors. Researchers, for example, have found that living in a violent neighborhood and experiencing violence as a victim or witness is associated with an increased risk for violent behavior among youth. Yet, this factor alone may not cause one to be violent and most people living in such a neighborhood do not become violent perpetrators. Similarly, researchers have found consistently that exposure to family violence (e.g., spousal and child abuse, fighting and conflict) increases the risk for youth violent behavior, but does not necessarily result in violent children. Likewise, researchers have found that first person killing video game playing is associated with increased risk for violent behavior, but not all the time. Yet, constant exposure to violence from multiple sources, including first person violent video games, in the absence of positive factors that help to buffer these negative exposures is likely to increase the probability that youth will engage in violent behavior.

Despite disagreements on the exact nature of the relationship between violent video game playing and violent or aggressive behavior, significant evidence exists linking video game playing with violent behavior and its correlates.  Although we are somewhat agnostic about the role of social controls like laws banning the sale of violent video games to minors, an argument against such social controls based on the conclusion  that the video games have no effect seems to oversimplify the issue. A more in-depth and critical analysis of the issue from multiple perspectives may both help more completely understand the causes and correlates of youth violence, and provide us with some direction for creative solutions to this persistent social problem.

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Pushing Buttons: Why linking real-world violence to video games is a dangerous distraction

In this week’s newsletter: Tragic shootings in the US have resurrected the disproven theory games turn people into killers. Why does this myth persist?

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Welcome to Pushing Buttons, the Guardian’s gaming newsletter. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox every week, just pop your email in below – and check your inbox (and spam) for the confirmation email.

Remember how, in the wake of yet more awful shootings in the US this month, Fox News decided to blame video games rather than, you know, the almost total absence of meaningful gun control? Remember how I said last week that the video-games-cause-violence “argument” was so mendacious and nakedly manipulative that I wasn’t going to dignify it with a response?

Well, here I am, responding, because the supposed link between video games and real-life violence is one of the most persistent myths that I’ve encountered over the course of my career, and it has an interesting (if also infuriating) history.

Many video games have violent content, just as many films and TV series have violent content (and of course many books, as anyone who has endured a Bret Easton Ellis novel will attest). And it makes intuitive sense that the interactivity of games – especially shooting games – might appear more troubling, from the outside, than passive media such as film. (I gotta say, though, that in 25 years of playing video games I have never seen a scene as violent or upsetting as, say, a Quentin Tarantino movie.)

But the idea that exposure to these violent games turns people into killers in real life is comprehensively false – and it deflects attention from the actual drivers of real-world violence, from inequality to access to firearms to online radicalisation. It is a very politically motivated argument, and one that makes me instantly suspicious of the person wielding it. The NRA, for instance, trots it out on the regular . Donald Trump, inciter of actual real-life violent riots, was fond of it too. Why might that be, I wonder?

First, the facts: there is no scientifically credible link between video games and real-life violence. A lot of the studies around this issue are, in a word, bad – small sample sizes, lab conditions that have no relation to how people engage with games in the real world – but the best we have show either no link at all between violent games and violent thoughts or behaviour, or a positive correlation so minuscule as to be meaningless. A review of the science in 2020 , which looked at and re-evaluated 28 global studies of video games and violence, found no cumulative harm, no long-term effect, and barely even any short-term effect on aggression in the real world. It concluded that the “long-term impacts of violent games on youth aggression are near zero”.

This seems self-evident: video games have been a part of popular culture for at least 50 years, since Pong, and violent games have existed in some form since Space Invaders, though they’ve gotten more visually realistic over time. If video games were in some way dangerous – if they significantly affected our behaviour, our emotional responses – you would expect to have seen widespread, cross-cultural changes in how we act. That is demonstrably not the case. Indeed, overall, violent crime has been decreasing for more than 20 years, the exact period of time during which games have become ubiquitous. Though it would be unscientific to credit video games with that effect, you would think that if the generations of people who’ve now played Doom or Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto were warped by it, we might be seeing some evidence of that by now.

It is true that some perpetrators of mass murders – such as the Columbine shooters – were fans of video games. But given that the great majority of teenagers are fans of video games, that doesn’t mean much. More often than a fixation on violent media – of all kinds – mass shooters display an obsession with weapons or explosives or real-life killers, an interest in extremist views, social ostracisation. These are not otherwise well-adjusted people suddenly compelled to real-world violence by a game, or a film, or a Marilyn Manson album.

The history of the “video games cause violence” argument goes back even further than video games themselves: it’s an extension of the panic that flares up whenever a new and supposedly morally abject form of youth culture emerges. In the 1940s, when New York’s mayor ordered 2,000 pinball machines to be seized so that he could performatively smash them up , it was arcades; during the satanic panic of the 1980s and beyond, it was metal music . Since the mid to late 90s, it’s been video games, and no amount of studies debunking any link between them and real-world violence seems to make a difference.

So why does this argument keep showing up? In short: because it’s an easy scapegoat that ties into older generations’ instinctive wariness of technology, screen time and youth culture, and it greatly benefits institutions like the NRA and pro-gun politicians to have a scapegoat. Whenever video games are implicated in a violent event, there is usually stunning hypocrisy on display. After the El Paso shooting in 2019, Walmart removed violent video game displays from its stores – but continued to sell actual guns . Fox News, the TV network that platforms Tucker Carlson and the great replacement theory with him, is happy to point out that the perpetrator of a mass shooting played video games, while remaining oddly quiet on the racist ideas that show up in these shooters’ manifestos.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t examine video game violence at all, or question it. Does every game that involves sneaking up on enemies need a gratuitous neck-breaking animation when you succeed in overpowering a guard? Why do games so often resort to violence as the primary method of interaction with a virtual world? Do we really need more violent media – couldn’t we be playing something more interesting than another military shooter? These are valid and interesting questions. But they have nothing to do with real-world violence.

What to play

Back in 1994, video game magazine Edge ended its review of Doom with this infamous line: “If only you could talk to these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances… Now that would be interesting.” Nearly 30 years later, “talk to the monsters” jokes and memes still crop up, even if nobody remembers where it originally came from.

Turns out that reviewer had a point, though, as proved by 2015’s Undertale , probably the most interesting anti-violent video game I’ve played. In this lo-fi role-playing game, you get into fights with plenty of monsters, but instead of battering them into submission you can win them over by talking them down and showing them mercy, which is often the more difficult option. In most games, there’s no question about what you do when a monster turns up in your path: this one makes you interrogate yourself. I interpreted it at the time as social commentary on pacifism and community, and looking back, I don’t think that was too much of an overreach.

Available on: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch Approximate play time: 6-10 hours

What to read

I’m going to start with a book this time: Lost in a Good Game: Why We Play Video Games and What They Can Do For Us, by Pete Etchells. A researcher and lecturer in biological psychology, Etchells’ perspective on video games is both relatable and extremely well-informed. He looks at the evidence (or lack of evidence) behind all the most pervasive beliefs about video games, and in the end he makes the case that most of the effects that they have on individuals and society are actually positive. It’s a reassuring read that I often recommend to worried parents who don’t play games themselves.

Grand Theft Auto V, perhaps the poster child for morally bankrupt video games that supposedly corrupt the youth, has now sold 165 million copies , following its launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X earlier this year. This makes it one of the most popular entertainment products of all time in any medium, and yet strangely, in the nine years since it was released, we have not seen the emergence of roving gangs of teenagers looking to act out their chaotic GTA Online shootouts in real life. Funny that.

What to click

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees review – short, simple and lovely to play

Activision Blizzard’s Raven Software workers vote to form industry’s first union

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Will return next week. If you have anything you’d like me to answer, just email me on [email protected]!

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October 2, 2018

Do Violent Video Games Trigger Aggression?

A study tries to find whether slaughtering zombies with a virtual assault weapon translates into misbehavior when a teenager returns to reality

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

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Intuitively, it makes sense Splatterhouse and Postal 2 would serve as virtual training sessions for teens, encouraging them to act out in ways that mimic game-related violence. But many studies have failed to find a clear connection between violent game play and belligerent behavior, and the controversy over whether the shoot-‘em-up world transfers to real life has persisted for years. A new study published on October 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tries to resolve the controversy by weighing the findings of two dozen studies on the topic.

The meta-analysis does tie violent video games to a small increase in physical aggression among adolescents and preteens. Yet debate is by no means over. Whereas the analysis was undertaken to help settle the science on the issue, researchers still disagree on the real-world significance of the findings.

This new analysis attempted to navigate through the minefield of conflicting research. Many studies find gaming associated with increases in aggression, but others identify no such link. A small but vocal cadre of researchers have argued much of the work implicating video games has serious flaws in that, among other things, it measures the frequency of aggressive thoughts or language rather than physically aggressive behaviors like hitting or pushing, which have more real-world relevance.

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Jay Hull, a social psychologist at Dartmouth College and a co-author on the new paper, has never been convinced by the critiques that have disparaged purported ties between gaming and aggression. “I just kept reading, over and over again, [these] criticisms of the literature and going, ‘that’s just not true,’” he says. So he and his colleagues designed the new meta-analysis to address these criticisms head-on and determine if they had merit.

Hull and colleagues pooled data from 24 studies that had been selected to avoid some of the criticisms leveled at earlier work. They only included research that measured the relationship between violent video game use and overt physical aggression. They also limited their analysis to studies that statistically controlled for several factors that could influence the relationship between gaming and subsequent behavior, such as age and baseline aggressive behavior.

Even with these constraints, their analysis found kids who played violent video games did become more aggressive over time. But the changes in behavior were not big. “According to traditional ways of looking at these numbers, it’s not a large effect—I would say it’s relatively small,” he says. But it’s “statistically reliable—it’s not by chance and not inconsequential.”

Their findings mesh with a 2015 literature review conducted by the American Psychological Association, which concluded violent video games worsen aggressive behavior in older children, adolescents and young adults. Together, Hull’s meta-analysis and the APA report help give clarity to the existing body of research, says Douglas Gentile, a developmental psychologist at Iowa State University who was not involved in conducting the meta-analysis. “Media violence is one risk factor for aggression,” he says. “It's not the biggest, it’s also not the smallest, but it’s worth paying attention to.”

Yet researchers who have been critical of links between games and violence contend Hull’s meta-analysis does not settle the issue. “They don’t find much. They just try to make it sound like they do,” says Christopher Ferguson, a psychologist at Stetson University in Florida, who has published papers questioning the link between violent video games and aggression.

Ferguson argues the degree to which video game use increases aggression in Hull’s analysis—what is known in psychology as the estimated “effect size”—is so small as to be essentially meaningless. After statistically controlling for several other factors, the meta-analysis reported an effect size of 0.08, which suggests that violent video games account for less than one percent of the variation in aggressive behavior among U.S. teens and pre-teens—if, in fact, there is a cause-and effect relationship between game play and hostile actions. It may instead be that the relationship between gaming and aggression is a statistical artifact caused by lingering flaws in study design, Ferguson says.  

Johannes Breuer, a psychologist at GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany, agrees, noting that according to “a common rule of thumb in psychological research,” effect sizes below 0.1 are “considered trivial.” He adds meta-analyses are only as valid as the studies included in them, and that work on the issue has been plagued by methodological problems. For one thing, studies vary in terms of the criteria they use to determine if a video game is violent or not. By some measures, the Super Mario Bros. games would be considered violent, but by others not. Studies, too, often rely on subjects self-reporting their own aggressive acts, and they may not do so accurately. “All of this is not to say that the results of this meta-analysis are not valid,” he says. “But things like this need to be kept in mind when interpreting the findings and discussing their meaning.”

Hull says, however, that the effect size his team found still has real-world significance. An analysis of one of his earlier studies, which reported a similar estimated effect size of 0.083, found playing violent video games was linked with almost double the risk that kids would be sent to the school principal’s office for fighting. The study began by taking a group of children who hadn’t been dispatched to the principal in the previous month and then tracked them for a subsequent eight months. It found 4.8 percent of kids who reported only rarely playing violent video games were sent to the principal’s office at least once during that period compared with 9 percent who reported playing violent video games frequently. Hull theorizes violent games help kids become more comfortable with taking risks and engaging in abnormal behavior. “Their sense of right and wrong is being warped,” he notes.

Hull and his colleagues also found evidence ethnicity shapes the relationship between violent video games and aggression. White players seem more susceptible to the games' putative effects on behavior than do Hispanic and Asian players. Hull isn’t sure why, but he suspects the games' varying impact relates to how much kids are influenced by the norms of American culture, which, he says, are rooted in rugged individualism and a warriorlike mentality that may incite video game players to identify with aggressors rather than victims. It might “dampen sympathy toward their virtual victims,” he and his co-authors wrote, “with consequences for their values and behavior outside the game.”

Social scientists will, no doubt, continue to debate the psychological impacts of killing within the confines of interactive games. In a follow-up paper Hull says he plans to tackle the issue of the real-world significance of violent game play, and hopes it adds additional clarity. “It’s a knotty issue,” he notes—and it’s an open question whether research will ever quell the controversy.

The Reflector News

Featured stories, a look inside video games: do they promote violence.

Former President Donald Trump “called for a crackdown on violent video games and reforms to mental health laws, arguing that ‘mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,’” according to Time Magazine . All throughout my life, the stigma that video games lead to violence has loomed over my favorite pastime.

Ever since I was a kid, I had a controller or a mouse in my hands. Games are the source of my favorite memories with those I love. My dad introduced me to my favorite game of all time, “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” when it came out in November 2011. I have been playing “The Sims” franchise since I could read, starting off by watching my mom over her should as she played it. I played “World of Warcraft” with my dad, aunt and grandpa all throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” got me and my high school friends through March 2020 lockdown and virtual learning. Video games shaped my life, and I still play when I feel overwhelmed and need an escape, a virtual reality to find comfort in and be anyone I want to be for a few hours.

According to the Dana Foundation , video games were tied to the gunman who killed 22 people and injured 24 in an El Paso, Texas Walmart because he made a “fleeting reference” to soldiers he saw in video games. As a result of this, “…many politicians were quick to blame video games for this and other mass shootings. Yet it seems clear that the El Paso gunman was primarily motivated by ethnic hatred,” the Dana Foundation said. This rhetoric that associates video games with violence harms all players who do not exhibit violent, disturbing behavior. While there are some studies that highlight that video games can increase aggressive behaviors, The Guardian reports, “A review of the science in 2020, which looked at and re-evaluated 28 global studies of video games and violence, found no cumulative harm, no long-term effect and barely even any short-term effect on aggression in the real world.”

Video games are also proven to have many benefits for players, especially those in younger demographics. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) , “…one widely held view maintains that playing video games is intellectually lazy, such play actually may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception….” Even video games categorized as containing violent content may boost children’s learning as well as health and social skills, the APA states. While not all children should pick up the first gory, violent video game they see (there are certainly games out there that contain macabre content), playing these games will not turn them into violent individuals. It is common, even from my personal experience, to get into the game and lose sight of anything other than victory. I cannot put a number to the times I have been angry at a game, that I have “trash-talked” someone in competitive banter and have had my competitive nature triggered. That can be categorized as aggressive behavior, but the fact remains that the players who exhibit this behavior and act on it in the real world, outside of gaming, are the minority.

I know for myself and so many others that I have bonded with over games that this rhetoric about gaming, or, especially gamers, is harmful to what video games actually seek to do. Video games are for leisure, for fun, and act as a way to connect with other people. There are many flaws in video gaming communities that do promote what I would equate to bad sportsmanship, but, in the end, the game itself is not at fault for the actions of others.

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Like many, I use video games to immerse myself in a different world. When I return from by break from reality, I never had problems with harming others due to the games that I play.

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Do video games cause violence?

• Sherie Agcaoili, Contributing Writer
• Aug 9, 2023
• Aug 9, 2023 Updated Aug 17, 2023

Focus. Fight. Win.

To me, there is nothing more satisfying than finding a way to overcome your opponent in a game; it takes strategy, a quick reaction time and riding adrenaline highs as you make split-second decisions to defeat other players.

That’s where it stops; the rush that comes with playing these games provides me with a lot of stimulation in my otherwise normal life. While the moral panic surrounding the relationship between video games and violence is not a new phenomenon, today we are more likely to see the conflict play out through media and in politics.

In 2019, President Donald Trump delivered a speech that placed the blame for the El Paso and Dayton shootings squarely at the feet of violent video games.

“We must stop the glorification of violence in our society,” Trump said. “This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace.”

While President Joe Biden does not believe that video games directly contribute to violence, he does hold some reservations toward the activity.

"It is not healthy to have these games teaching the kids the dispassionate notion that you can shoot somebody,” Biden said. “But it’s not in and of itself the reason why we have this carnage on our streets.”

No Correlation

Before I go on to explain my opinion on this topic, I want to set some parameters for my arguments. For one, the concerns surrounding violent video games are focused especially toward teenagers and adolescents. These concerns are borne out of fear that playing violent video games during critical periods of development will negatively stunt one’s development. In addition, the violent video games discussed are primarily focused around first-person shooter games or fighting action games such as Doom, Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat. Finally, I would like to focus on forms of gun violence such as mass shootings in order to make my points.

When it comes to the question of if video games do cause violence, I believe that the answer is no. Don’t just take my word for it; multiple studies have found that there is no correlation between violent video games and violent behavior in adolescents.

For instance, a 2019 study published by researchers Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein concluded that, among teens aged 14 and 15, there was no relationship between increases in aggression and hours of playing violent video games.

I’d also like to draw on my own personal experiences; I enjoy playing fighting games and I have never assaulted anyone. Several of my friends have grown up with games such as Mortal Kombat , Halo and Call of Duty and they, too, have not lashed out violently.

I use video games to immerse myself in completely different worlds because I can take a temporary break from the stresses that come with… being alive.

Video games, including violent ones, allow people to reduce their stress. According to Seoul National University researchers, violent video games were found to reduce both verbal and physical forms of aggression in a group of 662 South Korean children. These findings line up with the catharsis hypothesis, which is defined as the idea that aggression and anger can be released through outlets like sports and, yes, video games.

The fact of the matter is that we as people turn to different forms of media during difficult times. Books, magazines, videos and, yes, games, are all forms of media that we regularly consume for our own enjoyment. In a study conducted by researchers Anne Marie Porter and Paula Goolkasian, Mortal Kombat players reported feeling less negative emotions such as anger; instead, they felt happiness and excitement as they played the game. Video games, even violent ones, can be satisfying to a player as long as they provide enrichment and challenge.

I’m sure that there are readers who either also play these kinds of games or know people who do, and have yet to hurt anyone. If there really was a correlation between the two variables, shouldn’t all people who have played gory video games be more inclined to harm people?

Other Factors

So if not gamers, who or what is responsible for the recent spike in gun violence now frequently reported in the media today? There’s a couple of answers for that.

Video games are being used as a scapegoat to explain violence committed by White perpetrators; however, video games are not being applied as an excuse in regards to African American perpetrators.

For one, racism plays a role in the perception of violent video games leading to violence in the real world.

A study conducted by the American Psychological Association concluded that people were more likely to turn to external factors, such as video games, to explain the violence committed by white perpetrators. African American perpetrators were more likely to be perceived as being naturally violent, in part due to pre-existing stereotypes of minority groups.

What this indicates is that an inherent bias toward White perpetrators exists, but people are willing to overlook it because violence is ‘not in their nature.’ People are willing to blame external factors like video games for violent behavior executed by White perpetrators. This completely disregards other external factors like family life and internal factors like mental health. In reality, video games should not be used as an excuse at all.

Other circumstances, such as risk factors, must be considered when attempting to understand the rise in gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that factors such as addiction, domestic abuse, dysfunctional families, gang activity and high levels of inequality can contribute to violent behavior in adolescents. Yet, these factors are seemingly forgotten about when violent video games are blamed for the increase in real world violence.

The Real Issue

There are better ways to address the overall problem of gun violence; the idea that fighting games or shooter games are responsible for these tragedies ultimately distracts from the issue.

Rather than restrict access to these kinds of games, we should make changes to gun control in the United States. The United States is one of the only countries where gun violence is at an all time high.

According to The Council on Foreign Relations, guns were the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the United States. Furthermore, there have been years in which mass shootings occurred every month; for instance, a Vox report noted that 2015 had 372 mass shootings in total, more mass shootings than days in the year.

In comparison, Australia has experienced sharp declines in gun violence following the implementation of the National Firearms Agreement, which was meant to restrict access to guns. A different Vox article revealed that firearm suicide rates decreased by 57%, and that the average firearm homicide rate went down by 42%.

To be clear, Australia was like the United States; it was a country that had long supported gun ownership and the right to bear arms. Yet, one mass shooting was enough to spur changes in Australian law. According to the New York Times, Australia has only experienced one shooting since the 1996 massacre.

It is possible for the United States to see similar decreases in gun violence, but we must change our approaches to the issue. Change is difficult, but changes in gun regulation laws will play a vital part in reducing overall gun violence. Restricting video games is not the answer.

Maybe not violence, but aggression for sure

• Arianne Karylle Cadiz, Chief Copy Editor

Blame Game: Violent Video Games Do Not Cause Violence

What research shows us about the link between violent video games and behavior..

Updated June 20, 2023 | Reviewed by Matt Huston

In February 2018, President Trump stated in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida that “the level of violence (in) video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.” He’s far from the first to suggest that violent video games make children violent.

It certainly looks like they do. Jimmy Kimmel humorously pointed this out when he challenged parents to turn off their children’s TVs while they were playing the popular shooter game Fortnite and film the results. Unsurprisingly, many of the children lashed out, some cursing, others striking their parents.

The research

Decades of research seem to support this, too. Three common ways that researchers test levels of aggression in a laboratory are with a “hot sauce paradigm,” the “Competitive Reaction Time Test,” and with word or story completion tasks.

In the hot sauce paradigm , researchers instruct participants to prepare a cup of hot sauce for a taste tester. They inform them that the taste tester must consume all of the hot sauce in the cup and that the taste tester detests spicy food. The more hot sauce the participants put into the cup, the more “aggressive” the participants are said to be.

In the Competitive Reaction Time Test , participants compete with a person in the next room. They are told that both people must press a button as fast as possible when they see a light flash. Whoever presses the button first will get to “punish” the opponent with a blast of white noise. They are allowed to turn up the volume as loud and as long as they want. In reality, there is no participant in the next room; the test is designed to let people win exactly half of the games. The researchers are measuring how far they turned the dial and how long they held it for. In theory, people who punish their opponent more severely are more aggressive.

During a word or story completion task , participants are shown a word with missing letters or a story without an ending. Participants are asked to guess what word can be made from those letters or to predict what will happen next in a story. When participants choose “aggressive” words (such as assuming that “M _ _ _ E R” is “murder” instead of “mother”) or assuming that characters will hurt one another, they are considered more aggressive.

These tests have been used to examine whether violent games increase aggression. Several representative studies are summarized below. In each study, the participants assigned to play a violent game seemed more prone to acting or thinking aggressively than those who played a non-violent game for an equivalent amount of time.

• 2000: Undergraduate psychology students played a video game for 30 minutes and were given the Competitive Reaction Time Test. Those who played Wolfenstein 3D (a violent game) turned the “ punishment ” dial for a longer period of time than those who played Myst (a non-violent game).
• 2002: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given a story completion task. Players who played Carmageddon , Duke Nukem , Mortal Kombat , or Future Cop (violent games) were more likely to predict that the characters in an ambiguous story would react to conflict aggressively than those who had played Glider Pro , 3D Pinball , Austin Powers , or Tetra Madness (non-violent games).
• 2004: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given a word-completion task. Players who played Dark Forces , Marathon 2 , Speed Demon , Street Fighter , and Wolfenstein 3D (violent games) were more likely to predict that word fragments were part of aggressive words than non-aggressive words than those who had played 3D Ultra Pinball , Glider Pro , Indy Car II , Jewel Box , and Myst (non-violent games).
• 2004: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given the Competitive Reaction Time Test. Those who played Marathon 2 (a violent game) turned the “noise punishment” dial to higher levels than those who had played Glider PRO (a non-violent game).
• 2014: Participants played a video game for 30 minutes and were given the hot sauce test. People who played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (a violent game) put more hot sauce into the cup than people who played LittleBigPlanet 2 (a non-violent game).

It is easy to conclude from this research that violent games make people more aggressive. In 2015, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on Violent Media analyzed 31 similar studies published since 2009 and concluded that “violent video game use has an effect on... aggressive behavior, cognitions, and affect.”

Is this research valid?

However, experienced gamers would notice a critical problem with the studies’ construction.

Although Wolfenstein 3D , Call of Duty , and Duke Nukem are certainly more violent than Myst , LittleBigPlanet 2 , and Glider Pro , violence is far from the only variable.

For example, Wolfenstein 3D is an action-packed, exciting, and fast-paced shooting game, while Myst is a slow, methodical, exploration and puzzle game. To help illustrate this point, here is footage of people playing Wolfenstein and Myst .

Comparing the two and assuming that any differences in the level of aggression after playing must be due to the different levels of violence ignores all of these other variables.

If it’s not violence, what is it?

Some researchers have taken note of this criticism in recent years and begun exploring alternative hypotheses for the differences found, such as that the violent games chosen were also harder to master and that many people had aggressive thoughts simply because they lost . When they have conducted more nuanced studies to explore these other hypotheses, they have found that the violence was not the critical variable.

For example, one clever set of studies examined whether players acted out simply because some games “impeded competence.”

• The first study demonstrated that two of the games in the previous studies differed significantly in how difficult the games were to master; Glider Pro 4 uses just two buttons, while Marathon 2 requires the mouse plus 20 different buttons. This additional variable they identified makes it inappropriate to compare the two and draw a scientifically credible conclusion.
• The researchers then created two first-person-shooter games with differing levels of violence. In the violent game, characters who the players shot suffered horrific, bloody deaths. The other was a paintball game in which characters simply disappeared when shot. The two games were otherwise identical. When they tested the level of aggression afterward, they found no differences between the groups .
• In two other studies, these researchers manipulated the game Tetris to be more complicated for half of the participants, either by making the controls complicated or by giving them pieces that could not fit into the grid easily. The groups playing complicated, frustrating versions of the game showed more aggression afterward.

In each of these studies, it was the level of difficulty— not the presence of violence—that predicted aggressive thoughts and actions afterward. When the games were better matched than the previous studies, violence did not appear to affect aggression after playing.

In other words, these researchers concluded that games can make people angry just by being difficult to win.

A clear example of how frustration alone can lead to aggression in a non-violent game can be seen on YouTube, on well-known streamer Markiplier’s first attempt to beat Getting Over It . The game is bizarre; players try to guide a shirtless man in a cauldron up a mountain using only a hammer. It is designed to be extraordinarily unforgiving; one minor misstep might undo an hour of progress. Here ’s a video of him throwing a chair when he slipped down the mountain.

Others have suggested that it is the level of competition present in many games which fosters aggressive thoughts and actions. This is easy to understand—how many of us have yelled at friends or overturned the board at the end of a tense game of Monopoly? One gaming writer quipped , “What makes you angrier: dying to a horde of violent aliens in Gears of War , or losing a close match to your taunting brother in the very non-violent Mario Kart ?”

Anecdotally, I have found these two hypotheses to be true for my clients. I frequently hear from them or their parents that they act aggressively while playing video games, e.g. breaking controllers or yelling at their parents or other players. When I ask my clients about the situation, they talk about feeling frustrated, usually because of difficult gameplay, opponents playing unfairly, losing, or having to stop playing at an inopportune time in the game. These outbursts happen for violent and non-violent games alike.

What if violence is the variable?

In order to understand the results of the experiments, it is important to understand the difference between “statistical significance” and “clinical significance.” Statistical significance is a way to assess whether the results of the study were due to a real difference between groups or whether the results might have been due to chance. Clinical significance is whether the results are important for individuals or the population as a whole.

For example, the 2000 study which found that, on average, players turned the “punishment” dial longer when they played Wolfenstein 3D than those who had played Myst did reach statistical significance.

However, the actual difference was between 6.81 and 6.65 seconds, a difference of 0.16 seconds. To put that number into context, blinking takes roughly 0.1 to 0.4 seconds . That is, subjects who played violent and non-violent games both chose to punish an imaginary opponent for roughly seven seconds. The difference between how long the groups held the dial was less than the blink of an eye .

A 2 percent difference in how long someone holds a dial in a laboratory is hardly cause for alarm. Further, studies have shown that this tiny increase in aggression fades quickly, lasting less than 10 minutes .

Despite this, the researchers linked violent video games to the school shooting at Columbine High School in the first paragraph of the paper.

The APA’s Society for Media Psychology and Technology has since firmly stated that this kind of comparison is inappropriate : “Journalists and policymakers do their constituencies a disservice where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games...there’s little scientific evidence to support the connection...Discovering that a young crime perpetrator also happened to play violent video games is no more illustrative than discovering that he or she happened to wear sneakers or used to watch Sesame Street.”

In fact, the Secret Service’s report studying characteristics of school shooters showed that only 14 percent of school shooters enjoyed violent video games , compared to 70 percent of their peers.

What about long-term effects?

Some researchers who study aggression use the General Aggression Model (GAM) , a unified theory of aggression created by the researcher who authored many of the papers that found a link between aggression and violent video games. The theory explains that many things may increase aggression in the short-term, including being insulted, unpleasant noises, and the temperature of the room.

The GAM theory further suggests that repeatedly acting on aggressive impulses may push people toward becoming permanently more aggressive. For example, a normally peaceful person may act out when insulted. The more times the person acts out, the more “accessible” violent responses become and the more likely this person is to act violently in future situations.

This makes intuitive sense, and researchers sometimes state that even a tiny increase in aggression, like the aforementioned 2 percent, could be cumulative and lead to long-term aggressive tendencies.

However, it does not appear that this is true. Researchers recently surveyed more than 1,000 British teens ages 14-15 on how often they play games, independently examined how violent those games are, and asked their parents to report how aggressively their children acted over the past month. They examined whether each variable was connected and found no evidence of a correlation. Teens who played violent games many hours per week did not act more aggressively than those who played peaceful games or no games at all.

Should children play violent games?

Of course, I am not suggesting that it is appropriate for young children to play violent games. I would not recommend that young children play Call of Duty for the same reason that I would not recommend they watch Saving Private Ryan until they are mature enough to understand it.

Even though it is not likely to make peaceful people aggressive, media which contains graphic violence can be frightening and hard to understand, especially for young people. Parents should take reasonable steps to ensure that their children are playing age-appropriate games, in the same way that they should ensure their children are watching age-appropriate movies.

Some parents choose to play video games with their children, ask them to play in a common area, or sit with them while they play to help provide context to the content of the games. These are great ideas; they allow parents to teach their children the difference between violence in games and in real life, to have conversations about the actions their characters take, and to comfort children who become scared.

It also helps parents understand what their children are experiencing while playing games so they can help them learn to manage these feelings of frustration. Parents who are familiar with their children’s video games can determine whether they are age-appropriate, their children’s motivations for play, how their children are affected, and how to set appropriate limits.

Adachi, P.J.C. & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of video game competition and violence on aggressive behavior: Which characteristic has the greatest influence? Psychology of Violence, 1 (4). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c375259442c9dc7d…

Allen, J.J., Anderson, C.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2017). The General Aggression Model. Current Opinion in Psychology, 19 . Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316119742_The_General_Aggressi…

Anderson, C.A., Carnagey, N.L., & Eubanks, J. (2003). Exposure to violent media: The effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (5). Retrieved from http://www.craiganderson.org/wp-content/uploads/caa/abstracts/2000-2004…

Anderson, C.A. & Dill, K.E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78 (4). Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.583.6828&rep=r…

APA Task Force on Violent Media (2015). Technical report on the review of the violent video game literature. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/families/review-video-games.pdf

Barlett, C., Branch, O., Rodeheffer, C., & Harris, R. (2009). How long do the short-term violent video game effects last? Aggressive Behavior, 35 . Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23996782_How_Long_Do_the_Short…

Breuer, J., Scharkow, M., & Quandt, T. (2013, December 23). Sore Losers? A Reexamination of the Frustration–Aggression Hypothesis for Colocated Video Game Play. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000020 Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261794000_Sore_losers_A_reexam…

Bushman, B.J. & Anderson, C.A. (2002). Violent video games and hostile expectations: A test of the General Aggression Model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237308783_Violent_Video_Games_…

Chester, D.S. & Lasko, E. (2018). Validating a standardized approach to the Taylor Aggression Paradigm. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325749887_Validating_a_Standar…

CNN. (2018, February 22). Trump blames video games, movies for violence [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKZn2Sf7bo

Doommaster1994 [Doommaster1994]. (2008, November 13). Wolfenstein 3D Gameplay [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=561sPCk6ByE

Ferguson, C.J. (2008). The school shooting/violent video game link: Causal relationship or moral panic? Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 5. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/725227/The_school_shooting_violent_video_game_…

Ferguson, C. (2017, Spring/Summer). News Media, Public Education and Public Policy Committee: Societal violence and video games: Public statements of a link are problematic. The Amplifier Magazine . Retrieved from https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-p…

Filardodesigns [filardodesigns]. (2008, September 8). MYST - Chapter 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-8CFun3nEw

Fischbach, M.E. [Markiplier]. (2017, December 7). I LITERALLY THROW A CHAIR IN RAGE | Getting Over It - Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/dH9w9VlyNO4

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Lieberman, J.D., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H.A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior, 25 . Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3a78/9895c3e18f9e3356e98feda68521b726f…

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Przybylski, A.K., Deci, E.L., Rigby, C.S., & Ryan, R.M. (2014). Competence-impeding electronic games and players’ aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106 (3). Retrieved from http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2014_Przy…

Przybylski, A.K. & Weinstein, N. (2019). Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents’ aggressive behaviour: Evidence from a registered report. Royal Society Open Science, 6 (2). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331409534_Violent_video_game_e…

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Andrew Fishman is a licensed social worker in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a lifelong gamer who works with clients to understand the impact video games have had on their mental health.

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What Research Says About Video Games And Violence In Children

President Trump held a roundtable at the White House Thursday to discuss violent video games and how they relate to school shootings. NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Douglas Gentile, psychology professor at Iowa State University, about what research tells us about video games and violence in children.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

President Trump has held a series of White House meetings on gun violence, and the focus of today's was video games. Lawmakers, parent advocates and people from video game companies were invited to talk with the president. The press was not allowed in. Trump has been focused on this subject for a while now. Here's what he said a couple weeks ago.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts.

SHAPIRO: The central question at the heart of this White House meeting is, does playing violent video games turn people into real-life shooters? Douglas Gentile has researched this issue. He's a psychology professor at Iowa State University. Thanks for joining us.

DOUGLAS GENTILE: My pleasure.

SHAPIRO: If you could just begin with the conclusion of your research - if every violent video game disappeared tomorrow, would there be fewer mass shootings?

GENTILE: We don't know the answer to that, but that's because aggression is actually very complicated. It's multi-causal. No one single thing causes it. And when we've had a school shooting, we usually ask the wrong question. We ask, what was the cause? And then we point around at different things such as mental health or violent video games or poverty or whatever. And none of them is it. What is it is when you put them all together. And so would it reduce the risk - yes. How much - we don't know.

SHAPIRO: So if we take a step back from mass shootings and say how much does playing violent video games increase real-life violence and aggression, do we have a clear answer to that?

GENTILE: We have a clear answer when we're talking about aggression. So aggression is any behavior - that could be a verbal behavior, a physical behavior or a relational behavior - that is intended to harm someone else. So if you give someone the cold shoulder, that is aggressive. But that's different from violence, which is only physical and extreme such that if successful, it would cause severe bodily damage or death. And the research on media violence and aggression seems pretty clear - that the more children consume media violence, whether that's in video games, TV or movies, they do become more willing to behave aggressively when provoked.

SHAPIRO: You sort of conflated video games, TV, movies there. In a video game, you're pretending to be the shooter. You're interacting with a virtual world. TV or movies is much more passive. Is there an important distinction there, or is violence violence in media no matter whether it's interactive or passive?

GENTILE: We used to think that video games would have a much larger effect than passive media like TV or movies. But the research has not seemed to bear that out. It seems to be about the same size effect, which is somewhat surprising because they are active, and you are being rewarded for it. But basically what we're coming down to is learning. We can learn from all of these different ways. And it seems we don't learn particularly differently from video games than from TV or movies.

SHAPIRO: Some people have offered a theory that videogames can be catharsis, and expressing violent impulses in a virtual world helps people not express those in the real world. Has that been disproven?

GENTILE: That has been disproven. So how do you memorize a phone number? You repeat it. Does seeing it one more time take it out of your brain? That would be the catharsis idea, right?

SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Right.

GENTILE: But, no, each new time you see it burns it in a little deeper. So in fact, there's no possible way that catharsis can happen, at least not nearly the way people like to talk about it.

SHAPIRO: Do you think the premise of this White House meeting is flawed? I mean, should video games be one focus of this debate over gun violence in America?

GENTILE: I do think it's flawed. I think the problem is that we're seeking a simple solution to a complex problem. And I noticed there are no real aggression researchers at this White House meeting. So we're not even getting the real picture. What we're getting is just a very one-sided and very limited look into only one of the risk factors for aggression.

SHAPIRO: Professor Gentile, thanks very much.

GENTILE: My pleasure.

SHAPIRO: Psychology professor Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University.

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Let's End the Debate About Video Games and Violence

In the wake of the  Valentine’s Day shooting at a Broward County, Florida high school , a familiar trope has reemerged: Often, when a young man is the shooter, people try to blame the tragedy on violent video games and other forms of media. Florida lawmaker Jared Moskowitz  made the connection  the day after the shooting, saying the gunman “was prepared to pick off students like it’s a video game.”

In January, after  two students were killed and many others wounded  by a 15-year-old shooter in Benton, Kentucky, the state’s governor criticized popular culture,  telling reporters , “We can’t celebrate death in video games, celebrate death in TV shows, celebrate death in movies, celebrate death in musical lyrics and remove any sense of morality and sense of higher authority and then expect that things like this are not going to happen.”

But, speaking as a researcher who has studied violent video games for almost 15 years, I can state that there is no evidence to support these claims that violent media and real-world violence are connected. As far back as 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that  research did not find a clear connection between violent video games and aggressive behavior. Criminologists who study mass shootings specifically refer to those sorts of connections as a “ myth .” And in 2017, the Media Psychology and Technology division of the American Psychological Association released a  statement  I helped craft, suggesting reporters and policymakers cease linking mass shootings to violent media, given the lack of evidence for a link.

A History of Moral Panic

So why are so many policymakers inclined to blame violent video games for violence? There are two main reasons.

The first is the psychological research community’s efforts to  market itself  as strictly scientific. This led to a  replication   crisis  instead, with researchers often  unable to repeat the results  of their studies. Now, psychology researchers are reassessing their analyses of a wide range of issues – not just violent video games, but  implicit racism ,  power poses  and more.

The other part of the answer lies in the  troubled history  of violent video game research specifically. Beginning in the early 2000s, some scholars, anti-media advocates and professional groups like the APA began working to connect a  methodologically messy  and often contradictory set of results to public health concerns about violence. This echoed historical patterns of moral panic, such as  1950s concerns about comic books  and  Tipper Gore’s efforts to blame pop and rock music  in the 1980s for violence, sex and satanism.

Particularly in the early 2000s, dubious evidence regarding violent video games was  uncritically promoted . But over the years, confidence among scholars that violent video games influence aggression or violence  has crumbled .

Reviewing the Scholarly Literature

My own research has examined the degree to which violent video games can – or can’t – predict youth aggression and violence. In a 2015  meta-analysis , I examined 101 studies on the subject and found that violent video games had little impact on kids’ aggression, mood, helping behavior or grades.

Two years later, I found  evidence that scholarly journals’ editorial biases  had distorted the scientific record on violent video games. Experimental studies that found effects were more likely to be published than studies that had found none. This was  consistent with others’ findings . As the Supreme Court noted, any impacts due to video games are  nearly impossible to distinguish from the effects of other media, like cartoons and movies.

Any claims that there is consistent evidence that violent video games encourage aggression are simply false.

Spikes in violent video games’ popularity  are well-known to correlate with substantial declines in youth violence – not increases. These correlations are very strong, stronger than most seen in behavioral research. More recent research suggests that the  releases of highly popular  violent video games are associated with  immediate declines  in violent crime, hinting that the releases may cause the drop-off.

The Role of Professional Groups

With so little evidence, why are people like Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin still trying to blame violent video games for mass shootings by young men? Can groups like the National Rifle Association seriously blame  imaginary guns  for gun violence?

A key element of that problem is the willingness of professional guild organizations such as the  APA  to promote false beliefs about violent video games. (I’m a fellow of the APA.) These groups mainly exist to promote a profession among news media, the public and policymakers,  influencing licensing and insurance laws . They also make it easier to get grants and newspaper headlines. Psychologists and psychology researchers like myself pay them yearly dues to increase the public profile of psychology. But there is a risk the general public may mistake promotional positions for objective science.

In 2005 the APA released its first  policy statement  linking violent video games to aggression. However, my  recent analysis of internal APA documents with  criminologist Allen Copenhaver  found that the APA ignored inconsistencies and methodological problems in the research data.

The APA  updated  its statement in 2015, but that sparked controversy immediately: More than  230 scholars  wrote to the group asking it to stop releasing policy statements altogether. I and others objected to  perceived conflicts of interest and lack of transparency  tainting the process.

It’s bad enough that these statements misrepresent the actual scholarly research and misinform the public. But it’s worse when those falsehoods give advocacy groups like the NRA cover to shift blame for violence onto nonissues like video games. The resulting misunderstandings delay efforts to address mental illness and other issues that are actually related to gun violence.

This article was originally published on  The Conversation . Read the  original article .

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• Open access
• Published: 13 March 2018

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

• Simone Kühn 1 , 2 ,
• Dimitrij Tycho Kugler 2 ,
• Katharina Schmalen 1 ,
• Markus Weichenberger 1 ,
• Charlotte Witt 1 &
• Jürgen Gallinat 2  

Molecular Psychiatry volume  24 ,  pages 1220–1234 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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It is a widespread concern that violent video games promote aggression, reduce pro-social behaviour, increase impulsivity and interfere with cognition as well as mood in its players. Previous experimental studies have focussed on short-term effects of violent video gameplay on aggression, yet there are reasons to believe that these effects are mostly the result of priming. In contrast, the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay using a large battery of tests spanning questionnaires, behavioural measures of aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), mental health (depressivity, anxiety) as well as executive control functions, before and after 2 months of gameplay. Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group. Also, no effects were observed between baseline and posttest directly after the intervention, nor between baseline and a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention period had ended. The present results thus provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective on the effects of violent video gaming.

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The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players [ 1 , 2 ], whereas the other camp [ 3 , 4 ] repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions [ 2 , 3 ]. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them [ 2 ] reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects.

To unravel this topic of research, we designed a randomised controlled trial on adults to draw causal conclusions on the influence of video games on aggression. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field [ 3 , 5 ]) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.

It has been suggested that the effects of studies focussing on consequences of short-term video gameplay (mostly conducted on college student populations) are mainly the result of priming effects, meaning that exposure to violent content increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts and affect when participants are in the immediate situation [ 6 ]. However, above and beyond this the General Aggression Model (GAM, [ 7 ]) assumes that repeatedly primed thoughts and feelings influence the perception of ongoing events and therewith elicits aggressive behaviour as a long-term effect. We think that priming effects are interesting and worthwhile exploring, but in contrast to the notion of the GAM our reading of the literature is that priming effects are short-lived (suggested to only last for <5 min and may potentially reverse after that time [ 8 ]). Priming effects should therefore only play a role in very close temporal proximity to gameplay. Moreover, there are a multitude of studies on college students that have failed to replicate priming effects [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] and associated predictions of the so-called GAM such as a desensitisation against violent content [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] in adolescents and college students or a decrease of empathy [ 15 ] and pro-social behaviour [ 16 , 17 ] as a result of playing violent video games.

However, in our view the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?” For this reason studies are needed in which participants are trained over longer periods of time, tested after a longer delay after acute playing and tested with broader batteries assessing aggression but also other relevant domains such as empathy as well as mood and cognition. Moreover, long-term follow-up assessments are needed to demonstrate long-term effects of frequent violent video gameplay. To fill this gap, we set out to expose adult participants to two different types of video games for a period of 2 months and investigate changes in measures of various constructs of interest at least one day after the last gaming session and test them once more 2 months after the end of the gameplay intervention. In contrast to the GAM, we hypothesised no increases of aggression or decreases in pro-social behaviour even after long-term exposure to a violent video game due to our reasoning that priming effects of violent video games are short-lived and should therefore not influence measures of aggression if they are not measured directly after acute gaming. In the present study, we assessed potential changes in the following domains: behavioural as well as questionnaire measures of aggression, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), and depressivity and anxiety as well as executive control functions. As the effects on aggression and pro-social behaviour were the core targets of the present study, we implemented multiple tests for these domains. This broad range of domains with its wide coverage and the longitudinal nature of the study design enabled us to draw more general conclusions regarding the causal effects of violent video games.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Ninety healthy participants (mean age = 28 years, SD = 7.3, range: 18–45, 48 females) were recruited by means of flyers and internet advertisements. The sample consisted of college students as well as of participants from the general community. The advertisement mentioned that we were recruiting for a longitudinal study on video gaming, but did not mention that we would offer an intervention or that we were expecting training effects. Participants were randomly assigned to the three groups ruling out self-selection effects. The sample size was based on estimates from a previous study with a similar design [ 18 ]. After complete description of the study, the participants’ informed written consent was obtained. The local ethics committee of the Charité University Clinic, Germany, approved of the study. We included participants that reported little, preferably no video game usage in the past 6 months (none of the participants ever played the game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA) or Sims 3 in any of its versions before). We excluded participants with psychological or neurological problems. The participants received financial compensation for the testing sessions (200 Euros) and performance-dependent additional payment for two behavioural tasks detailed below, but received no money for the training itself.

Training procedure

The violent video game group (5 participants dropped out between pre- and posttest, resulting in a group of n  = 25, mean age = 26.6 years, SD = 6.0, 14 females) played the game Grand Theft Auto V on a Playstation 3 console over a period of 8 weeks. The active control group played the non-violent video game Sims 3 on the same console (6 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 24, mean age = 25.8 years, SD = 6.8, 12 females). The passive control group (2 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 28, mean age = 30.9 years, SD = 8.4, 12 females) was not given a gaming console and had no task but underwent the same testing procedure as the two other groups. The passive control group was not aware of the fact that they were part of a control group to prevent self-training attempts. The experimenters testing the participants were blind to group membership, but we were unable to prevent participants from talking about the game during testing, which in some cases lead to an unblinding of experimental condition. Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day. Participants were only reimbursed for the sessions in which they came to the lab. Our previous research suggests that the perceived fun in gaming was positively associated with training outcome [ 18 ] and we speculated that enforcing training sessions through payment would impair motivation and thus diminish the potential effect of the intervention. Participants underwent a testing session before (baseline) and after the training period of 2 months (posttest 1) as well as a follow-up testing sessions 2 months after the training period (posttest 2).

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA)

GTA is an action-adventure video game situated in a fictional highly violent game world in which players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game. The single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The gameplay focuses on an open world (sandbox game) where the player can choose between different behaviours. The game also allows the player to engage in various side activities, such as action-adventure, driving, third-person shooting, occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements. The open world design lets players freely roam around the fictional world so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts.

The Sims 3 (Sims)

Sims is a life simulation game and also classified as a sandbox game because it lacks clearly defined goals. The player creates virtual individuals called “Sims”, and customises their appearance, their personalities and places them in a home, directs their moods, satisfies their desires and accompanies them in their daily activities and by becoming part of a social network. It offers opportunities, which the player may choose to pursue or to refuse, similar as GTA but is generally considered as a pro-social and clearly non-violent game.

Assessment battery

To assess aggression and associated constructs we used the following questionnaires: Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire [ 19 ], State Hostility Scale [ 20 ], Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale [ 21 , 22 ], Moral Disengagement Scale [ 23 , 24 ], the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test [ 25 , 26 ] and a so-called World View Measure [ 27 ]. All of these measures have previously been used in research investigating the effects of violent video gameplay, however, the first two most prominently. Additionally, behavioural measures of aggression were used: a Word Completion Task, a Lexical Decision Task [ 28 ] and the Delay frustration task [ 29 ] (an inter-correlation matrix is depicted in Supplementary Figure 1 1). From these behavioural measures, the first two were previously used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay. To assess variables that have been related to the construct of impulsivity, we used the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale [ 30 ] and the Boredom Propensity Scale [ 31 ] as well as tasks assessing risk taking and delay discounting behaviourally, namely the Balloon Analogue Risk Task [ 32 ] and a Delay-Discounting Task [ 33 ]. To quantify pro-social behaviour, we employed: Interpersonal Reactivity Index [ 34 ] (frequently used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay), Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale [ 35 ], Reading the Mind in the Eyes test [ 36 ], Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire [ 37 ] and Richardson Conflict Response Questionnaire [ 38 ]. To assess depressivity and anxiety, which has previously been associated with intense video game playing [ 39 ], we used Beck Depression Inventory [ 40 ] and State Trait Anxiety Inventory [ 41 ]. To characterise executive control function, we used a Stop Signal Task [ 42 ], a Multi-Source Interference Task [ 43 ] and a Task Switching Task [ 44 ] which have all been previously used to assess effects of video gameplay. More details on all instruments used can be found in the Supplementary Material.

Data analysis

On the basis of the research question whether violent video game playing enhances aggression and reduces empathy, the focus of the present analysis was on time by group interactions. We conducted these interaction analyses separately, comparing the violent video game group against the active control group (GTA vs. Sims) and separately against the passive control group (GTA vs. Controls) that did not receive any intervention and separately for the potential changes during the intervention period (baseline vs. posttest 1) and to test for potential long-term changes (baseline vs. posttest 2). We employed classical frequentist statistics running a repeated-measures ANOVA controlling for the covariates sex and age.

Since we collected 52 separate outcome variables and conduced four different tests with each (GTA vs. Sims, GTA vs. Controls, crossed with baseline vs. posttest 1, baseline vs. posttest 2), we had to conduct 52 × 4 = 208 frequentist statistical tests. Setting the alpha value to 0.05 means that by pure chance about 10.4 analyses should become significant. To account for this multiple testing problem and the associated alpha inflation, we conducted a Bonferroni correction. According to Bonferroni, the critical value for the entire set of n tests is set to an alpha value of 0.05 by taking alpha/ n  = 0.00024.

Since the Bonferroni correction has sometimes been criticised as overly conservative, we conducted false discovery rate (FDR) correction [ 45 ]. FDR correction also determines adjusted p -values for each test, however, it controls only for the number of false discoveries in those tests that result in a discovery (namely a significant result).

Moreover, we tested for group differences at the baseline assessment using independent t -tests, since those may hamper the interpretation of significant interactions between group and time that we were primarily interested in.

Since the frequentist framework does not enable to evaluate whether the observed null effect of the hypothesised interaction is indicative of the absence of a relation between violent video gaming and our dependent variables, the amount of evidence in favour of the null hypothesis has been tested using a Bayesian framework. Within the Bayesian framework both the evidence in favour of the null and the alternative hypothesis are directly computed based on the observed data, giving rise to the possibility of comparing the two. We conducted Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVAs comparing the model in favour of the null and the model in favour of the alternative hypothesis resulting in a Bayes factor (BF) using Bayesian Information criteria [ 46 ]. The BF 01 suggests how much more likely the data is to occur under the null hypothesis. All analyses were performed using the JASP software package ( https://jasp-stats.org ).

Sex distribution in the present study did not differ across the groups ( χ 2 p -value > 0.414). However, due to the fact that differences between males and females have been observed in terms of aggression and empathy [ 47 ], we present analyses controlling for sex. Since our random assignment to the three groups did result in significant age differences between groups, with the passive control group being significantly older than the GTA ( t (51) = −2.10, p  = 0.041) and the Sims group ( t (50) = −2.38, p  = 0.021), we also controlled for age.

The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks interval (with no significant group difference p  = 0.48).

To test whether participants assigned to the violent GTA game show emotional, cognitive and behavioural changes, we present the results of repeated-measure ANOVA time x group interaction analyses separately for GTA vs. Sims and GTA vs. Controls (Tables  1 – 3 ). Moreover, we split the analyses according to the time domain into effects from baseline assessment to posttest 1 (Table  2 ) and effects from baseline assessment to posttest 2 (Table  3 ) to capture more long-lasting or evolving effects. In addition to the statistical test values, we report partial omega squared ( ω 2 ) as an effect size measure. Next to the classical frequentist statistics, we report the results of a Bayesian statistical approach, namely BF 01 , the likelihood with which the data is to occur under the null hypothesis that there is no significant time × group interaction. In Table  2 , we report the presence of significant group differences at baseline in the right most column.

Since we conducted 208 separate frequentist tests we expected 10.4 significant effects simply by chance when setting the alpha value to 0.05. In fact we found only eight significant time × group interactions (these are marked with an asterisk in Tables  2 and 3 ).

When applying a conservative Bonferroni correction, none of those tests survive the corrected threshold of p  < 0.00024. Neither does any test survive the more lenient FDR correction. The arithmetic mean of the frequentist test statistics likewise shows that on average no significant effect was found (bottom rows in Tables  2 and 3 ).

In line with the findings from a frequentist approach, the harmonic mean of the Bayesian factor BF 01 is consistently above one but not very far from one. This likewise suggests that there is very likely no interaction between group × time and therewith no detrimental effects of the violent video game GTA in the domains tested. The evidence in favour of the null hypothesis based on the Bayes factor is not massive, but clearly above 1. Some of the harmonic means are above 1.6 and constitute substantial evidence [ 48 ]. However, the harmonic mean has been criticised as unstable. Owing to the fact that the sum is dominated by occasional small terms in the likelihood, one may underestimate the actual evidence in favour of the null hypothesis [ 49 ].

To test the sensitivity of the present study to detect relevant effects we computed the effect size that we would have been able to detect. The information we used consisted of alpha error probability = 0.05, power = 0.95, our sample size, number of groups and of measurement occasions and correlation between the repeated measures at posttest 1 and posttest 2 (average r  = 0.68). According to G*Power [ 50 ], we could detect small effect sizes of f  = 0.16 (equals η 2  = 0.025 and r  = 0.16) in each separate test. When accounting for the conservative Bonferroni-corrected p -value of 0.00024, still a medium effect size of f  = 0.23 (equals η 2  = 0.05 and r  = 0.22) would have been detectable. A meta-analysis by Anderson [ 2 ] reported an average effects size of r  = 0.18 for experimental studies testing for aggressive behaviour and another by Greitmeyer [ 5 ] reported average effect sizes of r  = 0.19, 0.25 and 0.17 for effects of violent games on aggressive behaviour, cognition and affect, all of which should have been detectable at least before multiple test correction.

Within the scope of the present study we tested the potential effects of playing the violent video game GTA V for 2 months against an active control group that played the non-violent, rather pro-social life simulation game The Sims 3 and a passive control group. Participants were tested before and after the long-term intervention and at a follow-up appointment 2 months later. Although we used a comprehensive test battery consisting of questionnaires and computerised behavioural tests assessing aggression, impulsivity-related constructs, mood, anxiety, empathy, interpersonal competencies and executive control functions, we did not find relevant negative effects in response to violent video game playing. In fact, only three tests of the 208 statistical tests performed showed a significant interaction pattern that would be in line with this hypothesis. Since at least ten significant effects would be expected purely by chance, we conclude that there were no detrimental effects of violent video gameplay.

This finding stands in contrast to some experimental studies, in which short-term effects of violent video game exposure have been investigated and where increases in aggressive thoughts and affect as well as decreases in helping behaviour have been observed [ 1 ]. However, these effects of violent video gaming on aggressiveness—if present at all (see above)—seem to be rather short-lived, potentially lasting <15 min [ 8 , 51 ]. In addition, these short-term effects of video gaming are far from consistent as multiple studies fail to demonstrate or replicate them [ 16 , 17 ]. This may in part be due to problems, that are very prominent in this field of research, namely that the outcome measures of aggression and pro-social behaviour, are poorly standardised, do not easily generalise to real-life behaviour and may have lead to selective reporting of the results [ 3 ]. We tried to address these concerns by including a large set of outcome measures that were mostly inspired by previous studies demonstrating effects of short-term violent video gameplay on aggressive behaviour and thoughts, that we report exhaustively.

Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant. Two previous studies have employed longer training intervals. In an online study, participants with a broad age range (14–68 years) have been trained in a violent video game for 4 weeks [ 52 ]. In comparison to a passive control group no changes were observed, neither in aggression-related beliefs, nor in aggressive social interactions assessed by means of two questions. In a more recent study, participants played a previous version of GTA for 12 h spread across 3 weeks [ 53 ]. Participants were compared to a passive control group using the Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, a questionnaire assessing impulsive or reactive aggression, attitude towards violence, and empathy. The authors only report a limited increase in pro-violent attitude. Unfortunately, this study only assessed posttest measures, which precludes the assessment of actual changes caused by the game intervention.

The present study goes beyond these studies by showing that 2 months of violent video gameplay does neither lead to any significant negative effects in a broad assessment battery administered directly after the intervention nor at a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention. The fact that we assessed multiple domains, not finding an effect in any of them, makes the present study the most comprehensive in the field. Our battery included self-report instruments on aggression (Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, State Hostility scale, Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, Moral Disengagement scale, World View Measure and Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test) as well as computer-based tests measuring aggressive behaviour such as the delay frustration task and measuring the availability of aggressive words using the word completion test and a lexical decision task. Moreover, we assessed impulse-related concepts such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness and associated behavioural measures such as the computerised Balloon analogue risk task, and delay discounting. Four scales assessing empathy and interpersonal competence scales, including the reading the mind in the eyes test revealed no effects of violent video gameplay. Neither did we find any effects on depressivity (Becks depression inventory) nor anxiety measured as a state as well as a trait. This is an important point, since several studies reported higher rates of depressivity and anxiety in populations of habitual video gamers [ 54 , 55 ]. Last but not least, our results revealed also no substantial changes in executive control tasks performance, neither in the Stop signal task, the Multi-source interference task or a Task switching task. Previous studies have shown higher performance of habitual action video gamers in executive tasks such as task switching [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and another study suggests that training with action video games improves task performance that relates to executive functions [ 59 ], however, these associations were not confirmed by a meta-analysis in the field [ 60 ]. The absence of changes in the stop signal task fits well with previous studies that likewise revealed no difference between in habitual action video gamers and controls in terms of action inhibition [ 61 , 62 ]. Although GTA does not qualify as a classical first-person shooter as most of the previously tested action video games, it is classified as an action-adventure game and shares multiple features with those action video games previously related to increases in executive function, including the need for hand–eye coordination and fast reaction times.

Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.

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SK has been funded by a Heisenberg grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG KU 3322/1-1, SFB 936/C7), the European Union (ERC-2016-StG-Self-Control-677804) and a Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation (JRF 2016–2018).

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Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K. et al. Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study. Mol Psychiatry 24 , 1220–1234 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-018-0031-7

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A Plea for Caution: Violent Video Games, the Supreme Court, and the Role of Science

On November 2, 2010, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association , with a ruling expected in 2011. This case addressed whether states have the right to restrict freedom of speech by limiting the sale of violent video games to minors. To date, 8 states have tried to pass legislation to this effect, with all attempts being found unconstitutional by lower courts. In large part, the Supreme Court's decision will be determined by its review and interpretation of the medical and social science literature addressing the effects of violent video games on children. Those on both sides of the violent video game debate claim that the scientific literature supports their opinions. Some involved in the debate have proclaimed that the debate is scientifically settled and that only people holding personal interests and biases oppose these “established truths.” We review the historical similarities found in the 1950s comic book debate and studies identified from a PubMed search of the term violent video games showing both the harmful and beneficial effects of these video games. We define factors that physicians need to consider when reading and stating opinions about this literature. Opinions from past court rulings are discussed to provide insight into how judges may approach the application of these social science studies to the current legal issue. Although on the surface the case of Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association pertains only to the restriction of violent video games, it may establish principles about how medical and public health testimony can affect fundamental constitutional rights and how much and on what basis the courts will defer to legislators' reliance on unsettled science.

On November 2, 2010, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association 1 (oral arguments available at http://www.oyez.org ), a case involving whether states can place statutory restrictions and labeling requirements on the sale or rental of “violent video games” to minors without violating constitutional principles of free speech guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. 1 , 2 Laws that restrict minors' access to sexual materials otherwise legal for adults (the “sliding scale” notion of restriction on free speech, with more restrictions for minors but fewer for adults) are constitutional because such material is deemed a less valued or protected form of speech. Proponents of violent video game restrictions argue that the sliding scale standard applied to minors' access to sexual materials should apply to violent video games as well. However, “violent material” has always been seen as protected speech because of its potential political and societal impact (eg, photos and combat footage from the Vietnam War that changed public perception of the war). 3 One of the crucial questions the Supreme Court justices will address in Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association is whether violent speech can be restricted under certain circumstances and, if so, whether a causal link is needed between the violent media and harm to satisfy First Amendment principles. 3 This determination will require the justices to focus on whether the evidence available in the scientific literature is sufficient to support such a link.

Scientifically, 2 competing social theories have been formulated about the potential effects of video game violence. The first is that video games increase violence because they teach players how to be violent and reinforce violent tendencies. The second theory is that video games have a neutral or possibly beneficial effect because they provide a socially acceptable, physically nondestructive outlet for the release of aggression and thereby promote better mental health.

Legally, the ruling in Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association may have implications for how scientific evidence is viewed and weighed by the Court, especially when it comes to the question of restricting constitutional rights. For example, what deference should a court give legislative findings or what level of persuasion or proof would be required before scientific evidence is seen as conclusive enough to limit constitutionally protected liberties? Is it sufficient for such evidence to be clear and convincing or does a higher standard apply, such as beyond a reasonable doubt, for courts to determine that a government restriction on First Amendment protected speech satisfies strict scrutiny analysis (the standard of review applied to government restrictions on protected speech)? Past cases such as Daubert, Joiner , and Kumho Tire primarily focused on how to keep junk science out of the court room and who is qualified to provide an expert opinion. 4 - 6 Daubert provided judges with principles to guide them in performing a “gatekeeping function,” including the following: (1) Can or has the theory or technique in question been tested? (2) Has it been subjected to peer review and publication? (3) Is there a known or potential error rate? (4) Is there a maintenance of standards regarding its operation? and (5) Has it gained widespread acceptance within a relevant scientific community? 4 The Daubert trilogy , as the 3 previous cases are known, was never intended to instruct legislators about how to determine which side of a scientific debate should be endorsed to justify First Amendment restrictions. In turn, the Daubert trilogy does not provide guidance to judges in determining how much deference to give legislative findings grounded on unsettled science. The Schwarzenegger decision may allow the Court to elucidate principles guiding judges on how much deference to give to scientific evidence and theories, especially when a conflict exists in the scientific community.

This article will review the 1950s comic book debate to highlight common elements in debates pertaining to media, children, and harm; the current state of the conflicted scientific literature concerning video game violence and the potential bias in that literature; and the opinions thus far of lower courts on the debate.

THE 1950s COMIC BOOK DEBATE

The comic book debate of the 1950s is eerily similar to the current debate about the effects of video games on children. In 1954, the US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held hearings on the effects of comic books on America's youth. 3 , 7 , 8 The primary focus of the Senate hearings was “crime and horror” comic books, some of which graphically showed horrific images such as dismembered bodies. Concerns were voiced that these comics would lead to a decline in public morals, an increase in violence and aggression, an increase in general lawlessness, and societal disrespect and deterioration. 8 Medical and social science experts became involved in the debate, writing articles such as “The Problem of the Comic Books” and “The Psychopathology of Comic Books,” which were published in reputable journals. 9 , 10 A leading proponent to limit, if not ban, the sale of “horror and crime comics,” as he defined them, was Dr Fredric Wertham, a forensic psychiatrist. 7 Many of the concerns that dominate the current video game debate were also expressed by Dr Wertham in his testimony to the Senate subcommittee ( Table 1 summarizes these similarities):

I would like to point out to you one other crime comic book which we have found to be particularly injurious to the ethical development of children and those are the Superman comic books. They arose in children's fantasies of sadistic joy in seeing other people punished over and over again, while you yourself remain immune. We have called it the “Superman complex.” In these comic books, the crime is always real and Superman's triumph over [evil] is unreal. Moreover, these books like any other, teach complete contempt of the police…I may say here on this subject there is practically no controversy …as long as the crime comic books industry exists in its present form, there are no secure homes. …crime comic books, as I define them, are the overwhelming majority of all comic books… There is an endless stream of brutality…I can only say that, in my opinion, this is a public-health problem. …I think it ought to be possible to keep the children under 15 from seeing them displayed to them and preventing these being sold directly to children.…The children don't say that this does them any harm, and that is an interesting thing because it has been so misrepresented by the comic book industry and their spokesmen in all the biased opinions that they peddle and that they hand out to unsuspecting newspaper editors (Italics added by author for emphasis). 8

Common Arguments Made About Comic Books in the 1950s and Violent Video Games

In large part because of these hearings, the comic book industry voluntarily adopted the Comics Code Authority standards. 3 , 7 Considering that Dr Wertham's testimony in Canada led to a ban on the import and sale of certain comic book titles, this seemed to be a reasonable step for the American comic book industry to take. 8

The concern about comic books persists to this day, as evidenced by mental health “authorities” focusing on the negative male stereotype that boys learn from comic book characters. However, the “destructive” comic books of the 1950s are currently being lauded for the positive societal values they taught. Sharon Lamb, PhD, was quoted in a 2010 press release as saying: “[The comic book heroes of the past did fight criminals], but [they] were heroes boys could look up to and learn from because, outside of their costumes, they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities.” 11

Sixty years in the future, will social scientists be espousing the positive benefits of today's video games as they currently are doing with yesterday's comic books?

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES

As already noted, the scientific community remains divided on the effect of violent video games on youth. Some investigators argue that the effect is negative, whereas others see a neutral to a beneficial effect. A review of the literature supporting each theory follows, as well as a specific case in point of such conflicting opinions. A critical stance toward current findings is advised given that the science on this issue remains unsettled.

Theory 1: Violent Video Games Have a Negative Effect on Youth

Articles reviewing the effects of video game content on general populations have found links between playing violent video games and changes in behavior, self-concept, and/or thought process. Barlett and Rodeheffer 12 found that persons who played realistic violent games for 45 minutes had a greater increase in arousal and aggressive feelings than persons who played unrealistic violent video games or nonviolent video games for the same period.

A study by Bushman and Anderson 13 (frequently quoted experts in the current debate) tried to address whether playing violent video games would lead to changes in behavior. In their study, participants played either a violent or nonviolent video game and were then exposed to a staged confrontation. Bushman and Anderson found many variations between the groups. First, the players of violent video games were less likely to help those involved in the staged confrontation than the players of the nonviolent games (21% vs 25%). Second, players of the violent video game rated the fight as less serious (mean score, 5.91 vs 6.44 on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the least serious and 10 being the most serious). Third, players of violent video games took longer to help if they did help (73.3 seconds vs 16.2 seconds). Fourth, players of the violent video game were less likely to “hear” the confrontation taking place (94% vs 99%). 13 Bushman and Anderson thought that this study demonstrated a definable change in behavior that was specifically related to playing violent video games.

In a different experiment by Bushman and Anderson, 13 a similar definable behavioral change was found after viewing violent movies. Those who had just seen a violent movie took 26% longer to offer assistance to a person with an injury (a person on crutches) than did people who were about to see the violent movie or were about to see or had just seen a nonviolent movie (6.89 seconds vs 5.46 seconds). 13 Findings that exposure to violent media may negatively affect health (eg, increased risk of substance use, sexual activity, obesity, or poor body image) and behavior have also been reported for other media, such as television and music. 14 - 17 The American Academy of Pediatrics started issuing official policy statements as early as 2001 that violent media (eg, television, movies, music, and video games) “represent a significant risk to the health of children and adolescents.” 15 , 16 This raises the question of whether the reported change in behavior is specific to any particular form of media or is caused by the violent content itself, regardless of the way it is experienced. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to directly compare the varying studies to determine which media, if any, have the most profound effect on behavior because different measures and study designs are used. Even when comparing the 2 studies done by Bushman and Anderson, the methods vary; one measured the time helping an injured person, whereas the second measured the time to help a person after a physical altercation, a situation in which rendering assistance may have exposed the study participant to more risk. Although both studies reported measured time to a response after exposure to violent media, the risks are not comparable.

Many published studies suggest that certain populations are more at risk and/or are more likely to play violent video games than others. 3 Studies suggest that at-risk individuals are usually male, have preexisting personality disorders or traits (eg, conduct disorder), have preexisting mental health conditions (eg, attention deficit disorder), have had difficult or traumatic upbringings, and are insecure (with poor self-esteem). 18 , 19 A review of the literature by Frölich et al 19 showed that children with attention deficit disorder were at a higher risk of showing “addictive” behavior to violent video games and that violent video games “might be a significant risk variable for aggressive behavior” in persons who already have aggressive personality traits.

Many studies have found a correlation or association between the amount of time a game is played and subsequent changes in behavior. 3 A study by Hastings et al, 20 which relied on parents' self-report of their children's video game–playing behaviors, suggested that spending a large amount of time playing violent video games was correlated with troublesome behavior and poor academic achievement. The same study also indicated that children who played more educational games had more positive outcomes.

Although not as frequently studied, the effects of playing positive “prosocial” video games have been examined. 21 - 23 In a study by Greitemeyer and Osswald, 21 players of a prosocial video game were more likely to help after a mishap, more willing to assist in further experiments, and more likely to intervene in a harassment situation, the opposite of what was found in the Bushman and Anderson study of violent video game players. 13 Their findings supported the notion that video games affect individuals, as would be hypothesized from “general learning theories.” 22 Specifically, a person's behavior is reinforced and/or encouraged by either prosocial or violent tactics that were rewarded by advancing in or winning the game.

Theory 2: Violent Video Games Have a Minimal, Undetermined, or Beneficial Effect on Youth

Although many articles have suggested a connection between violent video games and aggression, several have found no such relationship. 24 In 2007, a meta-analysis by Ferguson 25 found that, once “publication bias” was corrected, no significant correlation existed between violent video games and aggressive behavior. A study from Iran by Allahverdipour et al 26 found that “nongamers” and “excessive gamers” both had lower self-reported mental health wellness scores than “low to moderate gamers.” This finding suggests that excessive playing may be detrimental, but that there is some protective or, at least, nondeleterious effect to playing in moderation. 26 This finding is in line with social theory, which suggests that video games, like sports, may provide an outlet for individuals to work through aggression and, therefore, have better mental functioning and overall lower levels of aggression. Other studies have pointed to the positive attributes of violent video game playing, such as improved visual-spatial coordination, increased peripheral attention, and increased reactive decision-making capabilities. 25

In a study by Ferguson et al 27 examining the multivariate risk factors for youth violence, the most salient positive predictors of youth violence were delinquent peer influences, antisocial personality traits, depression, and parents or guardians who use psychological abuse in intimate relationships. The factors that were not found to be predictive of youth violence included neighborhood quality, parental use of domestic violence in intimate relationships, and exposure to violent television or video games.

In a study that may be directly applicable to the question before the Supreme Court in the Schwarzenegger case, Regenbogen et al 28 used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the brain to determine whether there was a change in brain imaging that suggested a loss of distinction between virtual and actual violence in players of violent video games compared with controls. What they found is that “the ability to differentiate automatically between real and virtual violence has not been diminished by a long-term history of violent video game play, nor have gamers' neural responses to real violence, in particular, been subject to desensitization processes.” This would indicate that, at least on a population basis, video games do not cause people to lose their grip on what is real vs what is fantasy.

A review of the literature published in 2009 by Mitrofan et al, 29 which tried to assess the association between watching violent television and playing violent video games and the emergence of behavioral problems in children with emotional difficulties, found the literature to be confused and contradictory. The overall conclusion of the authors was that the literature consisted of “insufficient, contradictory and methodologically flawed evidence on the association between television viewing and video game playing and aggression in children and young people with behavioral and emotional difficulties.” The authors warned that better studies were needed before any true evidence-based public health policy could be formulated.

A Case in Point: The Conflicting Response to the Meta-analysis by C. A. Anderson

The reactions to a meta-analysis performed by C.A. Anderson et al 30 illustrate the 2 sides of the debate. The first was written by Huesmann, 31 who has authored more than 30 articles about violence and aggression. The second is a commentary written by Ferguson and Kilburn, 32 who together have published more than 40 articles on the subject of violence.

Huesmann, 31 in his commentary “[n]ailing the coffin shut on doubts that violent video games stimulate aggression,” wrote:

Observational learning theory has evolved into social-cognitive information processing models that explain that what a child observes in any venue has both short-term and long-term influences on the child's behaviors and cognitions. C. A. Anderson et al.'s (2010) extensive meta-analysis of the effects of violent video games confirms what these theories predict and what prior research about other violent mass media has found [an association].…Contrary to some critics' assertions, the meta-analysis of C. A. Anderson et al. is methodologically sound and comprehensive. Yet the results of meta-analyses are unlikely to change the critics' views or the public's perception that the issue is undecided because some studies have yielded null effects, because many people are concerned that the implications of the research threaten freedom of expression, and because many people have their identities or self-interests closely tied to violent video games.

Dr Huesmann's commentary is strikingly similar in tone to the testimony provided by Dr Wertham regarding comic books in the 1950s.

In their commentary casting doubt on the link between the viewing of violent video games and aggression, Fergenson and Kilburn 32 wrote:

The issue of violent video game influences on youth violence and aggression remains intensely debated in the scholarly literature and among the general public. Several recent meta-analyses, examining outcome measures most closely related to serious aggressive acts, found little evidence for a relationship between violent video games and aggression or violence. In a new meta-analysis, C. A. Anderson et al. (2010) questioned these findings. However, their analysis has several methodological issues…includ[ing] many studies that do not relate well to serious aggression, an apparently biased sample of unpublished studies, and a “best practices” analysis that appears unreliable and does not consider the impact of unstandardized aggression measures on the inflation of effect size estimates.

The Need for Critical Review of the Literature

Many questions are raised by the split nature of the scientific literature regarding violence and video games. Do these articles represent “good science”? Are the results applicable to the real world? Were the results influenced by intentional (eg, researchers' personal beliefs) or unintentional (eg, sampling errors) bias? 29 , 32 - 34 In an attempt to answer these questions, we searched the PubMed database in 2010 using the search term violent video game with no limit on time frame, identifying 92 relevant publications. The findings of the identified articles are depicted in Table 2 . After reviewing the available publications in this one database, we realized that physicians should be mindful of several very important concerns when reading this or similar literature defining the risk of violence.

Findings of 92 Articles Addressing Violent Video Games a,b

The study of the long-term effects of video games is “new,” and the conflicting findings have not yet been fully vetted. 35 Home video game consoles did not become common household items until the late 1970s and early 1980s and did not develop enough processing power to render realistic depictions of violence until the late 1990s. 3 Video games of the type being targeted by legislation did not enter the market in large numbers until after industry rating labels went into effect in 1994. 3

It should be remembered that a correlation does not prove a causation. 33 For example, in the past, a correlation was reported between coffee consumption and lung and pancreatic cancer. However, is the real culprit the coffee the person is drinking or the proverbial cigarette he or she smokes with the coffee? 3 , 36 Do children with less parental involvement and supervision play more violent video games? If that is the case, then is the correlation with violence due not to the games per se but rather to a lack of parental supervision and interaction? The game time played would be then an accurate marker but not the real causative variable. If parents are asked to complete a survey about their children, are they likely or able to identify their own failings as parents?

One must also determine if a finding in the literature is “clinically” or practically relevant. 37 , 38 For example, many studies indicate that self-reported levels of aggression increase while playing video games. 33 , 38 Do these findings then translate into these players becoming more aggressive later or being more likely to engage in real violence? 33 , 37 , 38 The simple conclusion is that they probably do become more aggressive later, and, as previously mentioned, some academic studies support this hypothesis. However, studies also indicate that people who engage in or watch sports such as football, hockey, or martial arts (eg, judo) also show increased aggression while playing in or watching the event. 39 - 44 Are they at the same risk of future violence as the people who play video games? If multiple routine daily activities, such as watching or playing sports, driving a car, watching TV, reading a comic book, or playing video games, increase aggression and alter behavior, is the effect so common that it loses its significance as a specific public health concern? 38 , 45

When assessing the validity of data, we should remember that data are often processed by people with “theories” about how the mind learns and works. 46 Often, these theories change over time and drift in and out of academic, social, and political favor, as did the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother . At one time, the schizophrenogenic mother was a well-accepted theory to explain how environmental stressors, namely maternal interactions with children, could cause the child to become schizophrenic. 47 However, with a better understanding of central neurochemistry and the development of effective medications and new research techniques (eg, functional positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and genetic studies), the schizophrenogenic mother is no longer seen as the prime cause of schizophrenia. If the Court had ruled on the validity of the scientific evidence defining the cause of schizophrenia in the 1950s (ie, the schizophrenogenic mother) compared with the information available in 2010 (ie, genetics), such a ruling today would be seen as “good law” based on unfounded, premature, or bad science.

HOW THE COURTS HAVE REACTED

Previous court cases addressing states' attempts to restrict access to video games are summarized in Table 3 . The federal district court case of Entertainment Software Association v Rod Blagojevich is particularly instructive to the issues before the Supreme Court because of its analysis of the scientific literature regarding violent video games. 48 The court in that case found that the conclusions of the scientific proponents testifying in favor of limiting video games were overstated:

Dr. Anderson [PhD] testified that “it seems clear that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive behavior, aggressive thinking, physiological arousal, aggressive feelings, and is also associated with a decrease in prosocial behavior.”…The research underlying Dr. Anderson's testimony, however, does not support such a stark and sweeping conclusion…[Defense experts] noted that Dr. Anderson not only had failed to cite any peer-reviewed studies that had shown a definitive causal link between violent video game play and aggression, but had also ignored research that reached conflicting conclusions.…They also cited studies concluding that in certain instances, there was a negative relationship between violent video game play and aggressive thoughts and behavior (e.g., initial increases in aggression wore off if the individual was allowed to play violent video game for longer period)…Dr. Anderson also has not provided evidence to show that the purported relationship between violent video game exposure and aggressive thoughts or behavior is any greater than with other types of media violence…or other factors that contribute to aggression, such as poverty. In fact, several of the studies he uses to support his conclusions examine media violence generally and do not disaggregate the effect of video game violence or compare the effects of video game violence to these or other forms of media violence. 48

Synopsis of Previous Court Cases Regarding the Sale, Rental, or Distribution of Violent Video Games to Minors

IMPLICATIONS FOR PHYSICIANS

The current debate about whether violence is caused by video games will not be the last time that groups of social scientists on both sides will feel compelled to weigh in with “hard data and opinions” to advance their political or social agenda. As scientists, if we remember our history, we will be less likely to put forth theories, such as the Superman complex and the schizophrenogenic mother, as uncontested facts. It is hard to prove a direct causal relationship between violence and media to the average judge and/or juror considering the fact that millions if not billions of people have watched violence on television and in movies, listened to rap music, and played violent video games and have not engaged in violent acts.

Physicians only need to look at the current video game debate to understand how “scientific literature” may be applied, appropriately or inappropriately, to influence social policy. Misuse can have a profound effect on how medicine and physicians are viewed by the public and the courts. The Schwarzenegger decision may further change the standard by which medical testimony is accepted by the Court, as did the Daubert trilogy. To date, the lower courts have taken a very strict view in determining that science needs to show definitive causation. If the Supreme Court agrees with the lower courts, the future implications of its decision may be difficult to predict. It could result in a judicial free-for-all, leaving it up to each judge to make up his or her own mind about whether an issue has been conclusively decided scientifically. Alternatively, it could result in such strict guidelines on when scientific information can be used to justify a statutory restriction on constitutional rights that it severely limits scientific usefulness. It is important that we, as physicians, accurately report our scientific literature, its implications, and limitations; otherwise, we will see our testimony discounted, as was the testimony of Dr Anderson, by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. 48

Sample Persuasive Speech: Video games do/do not promote violence

I am not a video game addict but many of my acquaintances are. I am not a video game fan simply because I am not good as others at playing with the same enthusiasm and commitment. My acquaintances like playing video games because it helps them relax and feel as if they were kids again. Their children also play video games developed specifically for their age group. Video games develop reaction, problem-solving abilities, attention, and concentration. None of my acquaintances has ever committed a violent act. Video game exists in its virtual space, which does not make claims on real life. Video games get the brunt of the criticism. Our government is anti-video game. Yet, market forces can be the only regulatory mechanisms of violence in video games. Only two or three of the top best-selling video games are violent. Video games have no violent impact on a video gamer. Younger players may be vulnerable to the violent game content when the play video games that are not suitable for their age. Although first person shooter violence is common to video games, it is not likely to promote aggressive behavioral models. Kids play with toy soldiers but nobody thinks that this teaches them violence. Video games cannot be considered violent in relation to age, gender, socio-cultural belonging, and educational level. The reaction to the game’s content depends on the individual’s personal traits. Girsl do not react with greater arousal to violent content than boys. At least, no research has found any significant difference. It is unlikely that performing violent actions during the play may cause aggression in kids. Although Grand Theft Auto 3 was banned in Australia because of its graphic violence, it does not mean that it could have influenced the increase in crime rates. The problem is that minors often have uncontrolled access to adult games with violent content. Boys aged 7-12 like “action adventure”. They develop “killing instinct” only in virtual games but also in the games they play outdoors. Nevertheless, children’s exposure to violent content targeted at mature video gamers should be restricted by their parents and caregivers. I am defending video gaming on behalf of long-time gamers whose hobby has not turned them into psycho-terminators. Video gamers live in their own world of established video game rules, and they wish they could play safely without being disturbed. We’re in the habit of regulating our most innocent activities.

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Fact check: Claim of link between video games, school shootings refuted by studies

The claim: Post implies school shootings are linked to violent video games

A March 29 Facebook post ( direct link, archived link ) shows a cartoon image of a boy playing a video game while two adults watch a news broadcast about a school massacre.

"Guns cause all of this trouble!" reads a text bubble attributed to one of the adults. A text bubble attributed to the child reads, “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Some commenters linked video games to school shootings. 

"Your (sic) exactly right and the kids are getting younger that are playing these types of games!" reads one comment. 

"They are being brainwashed and desensitized," reads another comment.

The post generated over 1,000 shares in less than a week.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here conflicts with the expert consensus. There is no evidence of a causal link between school shootings and video games, according to an array of studies, meta-analyses and psychology and sociology experts.

Belief in link between shootings, video games based on logical fallacies

On March 27, a 28-year-old gunned down three children and three adults at a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, before being confronted and killed by police, as USA TODAY reported.

The incident led some social media users to revive a widely circulated claim that video games, particularly those that are violent or graphic, are linked to school shootings. Former President Donald Trump  and  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy  made similar claims in the wake of past school shootings.

The link between video games and aggressive behavior is a subject of debate among researchers, said James Ivory, a new media and communication technology expert at Virginia Tech. And some studies have claimed to show a link.

But experts have come to a broad consensus that video games don’t cause people to commit violent acts like school shootings.

"There is a relevant fallacy called the base rate fallacy wherein people attribute common activities, e.g., playing video games, to rarer events, e.g., mass shootings, even if the common activity is not tied to the rarer event," Ivory said in an email. "For example, most mass shooting perpetrators also wear shoes, but wearing shoes is not tied to mass shootings."

Fact check: Post falsely links antidepressant use to school shootings

A group of psychologists with the American Psychological Association released a 2017 statement that said there's scant evidence of "any causal or correlational connection between playing violent video games and actually committing violent activities."

Whitney DeCamp,  a sociology professor at Western Michigan University, said his research found that a properly nuanced analysis reveals no statistical connection.

"My own research has found a correlation, but it disappears after controlling for other factors," DeCamp said. "Other studies have sometimes reported finding a correlation, but sometimes fail to introduce controls that would properly examine that finding for potential spuriousness. ... We lack evidence supporting any effects from video games on violent behavior."

James Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, agreed that other factors must be taken into consideration when examining why people commit violent acts like school shootings.

"If a person already has a tendency toward violence, and they play violent video games, (that) doesn't necessarily mean that video game made them violent," Fox said. "It's a function of who you are. It doesn't create who you are." 

Research studies and data show no proof of link

Most research studies show no evidence of a causal link between video games and school shootings. This consensus becomes clear through meta-analysis studies, which combine findings from large numbers of studies that use different methodologies.

A 2008 meta-analysis  authored by Chris Ferguson , a psychology professor at Stetson University, found that existing scientific literature on violent video games and aggression demonstrated “no significant relationship between violent video game exposure and school shooting incidents."

Likewise, a  2014 time-series analysis  examined the associations among violent crime (particularly homicides and aggravated assaults), video game sales, internet keyword searches for violent video game guides and popular video game release dates. The analysis found that violent crime across the U.S. decreased at the same time video games were becoming more popular.

In addition, a 2019 meta-analysis found that violent video games do increase aggressive behavior but that these effects are almost always quite small. One of the co-authors, Maya Mathur, told The Nation's Health that "research on video games, as a whole, says almost nothing on video games and mass violence."  

Fact check: Baseless 'false flag' conspiracy theory on Nashville shooting circulates online

Data also shows that the rate of mass shooters who play video games is low.

A 2021 study Ferguson co-authored analyzed 169 male firearm mass homicide perpetrators and males of the same age who had not committed mass murders between 1992 and 2020. He found that mass homicide perpetrators played fewer violent video games than the control group. 

Other countries with a large number of video gamers also have far fewer school shootings than the U.S. For instance, China surpassed the U.S. in 2018 with video game revenue, according to data compiled by Newzoo and CNBC News.  But China had only one school shooting from January 2009 to May 2018, CNN reported

A 2012 Washington Post analysis that examined the world’s 10 largest video game markets found there was no statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related murders. Countries such as the Netherlands and South Korea, which have some of the highest video game spending per capita, were found to have the fewest gun-related murders.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

The New York Times, NBC News, the Washington Post and CNN have addressed similar versions of the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

• James Ivory, April 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Chris Ferguson, April 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• James Fox, April 10, Phone interview with USA TODAY
• Whitney DeCamp, April 11, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• American Psychological Association, March 3, 2020,  APA Reaffirms Position on Violent Video Games and Violent Behavior
• American Psychological Association, October 2019,  APA TASK FORCE REPORT on Violent Video Games
• The Amplifier Magazine, accessed April 11,  News Media, Public Education and Public Policy Committee
• Secret Service and Department of Education, June 2004,  THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES
• Journal of Mass Research Violence, Nov. 28, 2021,  Exposure to Bullying, Childhood Trauma, and Violence in Video Games Among Perpetrators of Mass Homicides: A Brief Report
• Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, accessed April 12,  The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Link or Moral Panic?
• American Psychological Association, accessed April 12,  Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data
• Association for Physiological Science, June 12, 2019,  Finding Common Ground in Meta-Analysis “Wars” on Violent Video Games
• The Nation's Health, October 2019,  Video games and health: Sorting science from popular beliefs — Many believe games cause gun violence
• CNBC News, accessed April 13,  Video game industry revenue vs. violent gun deaths
• Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2012,  Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders
• CNN, May 21, 2018,  The US has had 57 times as many school shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined
• NBC News, Aug. 5, 2019,  Fact check: Trump suggests video games to blame for mass shootings
• New York Times, Feb. 23, 2018,  Do Video Games Lead to Mass Shootings? Researchers Say No
• New York Times, Aug. 5, 2019,  Video Games Aren’t Why Shootings Happen. Politicians Still Blame Them.
• Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019,  Video games don’t cause mass shootings. But gamer culture encourages hate.
• CNN, Aug. 5, 2019,  Fact check: Are violent video games connected to mass shootings?

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