Are video games making kids violent, as so many parents have been worrying about?
Well, research has shown that that is just simply not the case.
For one thing,
even when video game sales have skyrocketed, the kids violence plummeted
to its lowest levels in the last 40 years, according to the government statistics.
Second, it has been increasingly recognized that early
research on violent video games linking to increased aggression were, in fact, problematic:
most studies used outcome measures that had nothing to do with real life
aggression and failed to control carefully for other important
variables; for example, family violence and mental health issues.
This
was something the U.S. Supreme Court recognized when, after considering
California’s attempt to ban the sale of violent videos games to minors, stated on June 27, 2011,
“These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason.”
More recent research has not found that children who play violent video games are more violent than other kids who do not play them.
Our modern fears over violent video games appear to be in line with prior moral panics over media to be as diverse as books and movies.
A very small number of kids, maybe 3%, exhibit
signs of pathological gaming.
But regarding concerns about aggression,
it appears to be that children learn to distinguish
between fantasy and reality, and their brains don’t treat these two as the same.
Santa Claus is a good example. Despite not only
their parents but all of society conspiring to lie to children about the
reality of Santa, children can reason out the improbability of his
existence by the time they are in Elementary school.
With this reasoning, kids can handle a video game that involves modern or full on violence, without becoming aggressive and violent themselves
links on the same (or similar) subject:
- http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.health.harvard.edu%2Fnewsletter%2Fimages%2FM1010a-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.health.harvard.edu%2Fnewsletters%2FHarvard_Mental_Health_Letter%2F2010%2FOctober%2Fviolent-video-games-and-young-people&h=249&w=410&tbnid=toTze32S07zq0M%3A&zoom=1&q=statistics%20do%20video%20games%20make%20kids%20violent&docid=GIchoE32mJPtQM&ei=zKCIU_akI4TyoASQmICoCA&tbm=isch&ved=0CFgQMygEMAQ&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=227&page=1&start=0&ndsp=23&surl=1&safe=active
- http://www.webpronews.com/video-games-dont-make-teens-violent-shows-study-2013-08
