Video Games and Violence

Why am I interested in this topic?

Back in the day…

More like this age… More like this age…

I had to do this face!

So my brother let me watch him play this game…

At the time where these were the S***!

And this never existed..

It was old school..

And since then I got attached to video games, so my topic is to show that video games are not correlated to violence.

In the past decade we had a lot of violent actions happening (shootings in schools…) and every body started to point fingers to video games for the blame.

But they forgot the main cause that makes all that happens!

So I decided to do some research about the matter using six different articles done between 2002 and I decided to use analytic and descriptive methods, to show that other people like Dr. Ferguson chased the main reasons to violence.

Ferguson, Christopher J. "Video Games and Youth Violence: A Prospective Analysis in Adolescents." - Springer. N.p., 14 Dec Web. 13 Dec Ferguson, Christopher J., and Cheryl K. Olson. "Video Game Violence Use Among." "Vulnerable" Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms. N.p., 21 Aug Web. 13 Dec Ferguson, Christopher J., Claudia San Miguel, Adolfo Garza, and Jessica M. Jerabeck. "A Longitudinal Test of Video Game Violence Influences on Dating and Aggression: A 3-year Longitudinal Study of Adolescents." Science Direct. N.p., 17 Nov Web. 13 Dec Kirsh, Steve J. "The Effects of Violent Video Games on Adolescents: The Overlooked Influence of Development." N.p., 28 Mar Web. 13 Dec Primack, Brian A., Mary V. Carroll, Megan McNamara, Mary Lou Klem, Brandy King, Michael Rich, Chun W. Chan, and Smita Nayak. "Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review." Science Direct. N.p., 15 May Web. 13 Dec Przybylski, Andrew K., Richard M. Ryan, and C. Scott Rigby. "The Motivating Role of Violence in Video Games." Sage Journals. N.p., Feb Web. 13 Dec Sources

Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson in his study “Video Games and Youth Violence: A Prospective Analysis in Adolescents” worked with a sample of 302 (52.3% female) mostly Hispanic youth, and conducted an investigation focusing on family environment, family violence, and depressive symptoms. He found that the current levels of depressive symptoms are a strong predictor of aggression and violence, and that neither video games exposure nor play was prospective predictors of aggression or violent among these youth. Dr. Ferguson also teamed up with Cheryl K. Olson in their study “Video Game Violence Use Among ‘Vulnerable’ Populations: The Impact of Violent Games on Delinquency and Bullying Among Children with Clinically Elevated Depression or Attention Deficit Symptoms” where they explored the sum of 337 children (62% female, mixed ethnicity, mean age = 12.93) with elevated attention deficit or depressive symptoms. They conducted an investigation concentrating on trait aggression, parental involvement and exposure to video game violence, and found out that there is no evidence for increased bullying or delinquent behaviors among these youth who played the violent video games.

For the third time too Dr. Ferguson teamed up with a larger group this time, which is consisted of Claudia San Miguel, Adolfo Garza, and Jessica M. Jerabeck on a large study named “A longitudinal test of video game violence influences on dating and aggression: A 3-year longitudinal study for adolescents.” This study was about 165 mainly Hispanic youth that were interviewed on 3 years time, there were an initial interview, 1 year and 3 year interval interviews. They found that exposure to video game violence is not related to any negative outcome, and that depression, antisocial personality traits, exposure to family violence and peer influences were the main predictors of the aggressive outcomes. As for Andrew K.Przybylski, Richard M. Ryan and C. Scott Rigby, they were trying to discover a different side of the relation between violence and violent video games. In their article “The Motivating Role of Violence in Video Games”, they worked on six studies, two survey based and four experimental, to investigate the role of violence of video games in motivating people to play them. Their result was that the violent content in the video games have a very low effect on the player motivation to play them, while enjoyment, value and desire for future play were the main motivation for the players to play the violent video games.

Dr. Brian A. Primack joined by Mary V. Carroll, Megan McNamara, Mary Lou Klem, Brandy King, Michael Rich, Chun W. Chan and Smita Nayak in the article “Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review”, worked on literature searches using 1452 articles from six databases (the Center on Media and Child Health Database of Research, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials), to investigate the relation between video games and the improvement of health outcomes. They found out that there is a potential promise that video games do improve health outcomes, especially in psychological and physical therapy. On the other hand, Steven J. Kirsh said in his review article “The effects of violent video games on adolescents: The overlooked influence of development” that “Anderson and Bushman [Annu. Rev. Psychol. 53 (2002) 27.] Have posited a General Aggression Model (GAM) to explain the mechanism behind the link between violent video games and aggressive behavior”. His main goal of his review was “to integrate the GAM with developmental changes that occur across adolescence” as he mentioned. But his result was that the influence of video games as a function of developmental changes across adolescence hasn’t been addressed yet.

So from what I found out, video games is definitely not correlated with violence, the real problem is the psychological state of the people that create violence. And in my opinion, family relations and social relations are essential in creating a bad psychological response.

In other words, give a psycho a joystick and tell him to play a violent video game to study if it will cause violence is just like turning the fire off with gasoline!

Thank You!