Jane Doe
Since the early days, psychologists, teachers, parents and health professionals have been interested in the effects media has on children. One of the things, which appear to be a problem seen among children who have had excessive exposure to violent video games and television is an increased level of aggression. The following study reviews peer-reviewed articles to understand if any link exists between exposure to violent video games and increased levels of aggression in children and adolescents. The focus of the studies examined will remain on violent video games due to their popularity among young children and adolescents. It is clearly an activity that has become a popular past-time of youth. “The average American child aged 2–17 years plays video games for 7 h a week “(Gentile & Walsh, 2002; Gentile, Lynch, Linder & Walsh, 2004, p. 6).
A meta-analysis was done by Anderson and Bushman (2001) of 54 independent studies involving 4262 participants in total, which measured the result of violent video game play and the findings confirmed the suspicion that a correlation exists (Gentile et al., 2004). “Playing violent games increases aggressive behaviors, increases aggressive cognitions, increases aggressive emotions, increases physiological arousal, and decreases prosocial behaviors” (Gentile et al., 2004, p. 7). This information should be concerning to parents who are not monitoring what their children are playing. Games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are extremely popular with young people and have content that is extremely violent (Duffy Counseling, 2016).
In a study by Uhlmann & Swanson (2004) measuring the results of violent video game exposure, 121 students were asked to rate their aggressive traits and actions on the Implicit Association Test. “Trait aggression, as well as self-reported, peer-reported and teacher-reported aggressive behavior correlates with exposure to violent television shows and video games” (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Singer & Singer, 1983, 1986; Singer, Singer, & Rapaczynski, 1984; Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004, p.43). The concern is regarding exposure to violence is evident when teachers and parents are also noticing an increase in aggressive behavior among youth who are playing these video games.
In the last study examined, another highly concerning factor associated with exposure to violent video games was found. According to Greitemeyer & McLatchie (2011), in addition to the aggression violent video games triggers, the perception of the victim being less human is also seen by those who are accustomed to the virtual violent exposure. “This increased denial of humanness to other people, in turn, seems to account for the effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior” (Greitemeyer & McLatchie, 2011, p. 664).
After reviewing three different studies on the impact exposure to violent media via video games has on the tendency to display increased aggression in youth confirms the question regarding a link between violent video game exposure and changes in behavior that should be concerning to parents. Although there is no solid solution in place as of yet, one could suggest that parents be mindful of what types of games they purchase for their children and how much time their child is engaged in violent game play. Hopefully this study brings about more agreement in regulating or minimizing access to violent video game play among youth in order to address this increasing problem that results in trouble among growing children and adolescents.
References
Duffy Counseling Center. (2016). Video Games: The Desensitization of Our Youth. Retrieved
Gentile, D.A., Lynch, P.J., Linder, J.R. & Walsh, D.A. (2004). The effects of violent video game
habits on adolescent hostility, aggressive behaviors, and school performance. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 5-22
Greitemeyer, T. & McLatchie, N. (2011). Denying Humanness to Others: A Newly Discovered
Mechanism by Which Violent Video Games Increase Aggressive Behavior. Psychological Science, 22 (5), 659–665
Uhlmann, E. & Swanson, J. (2004). Exposure to violent video games increases automatic
aggressiveness. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 41-52
