In the early 1980s, video games were seen as mostly harmless. Arcade cabinets had increased in popularity since the 70s, with children to young adults visiting arcades to play Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, and the like. When it came to aggression, the only situations where that seemed prevalent was in the competitive nature of video games, whether it came to working as teams or achieving high scores, just like many other types of games.
However, as the years went on, video games changed drastically, and come the 1990s, PC gaming saw a rise, as well as more advanced home-gaming consoles like the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn. Along with that came more involved video games with more extreme ideas, and in turn, more concern over the nature of the content being included in games. It’s an age-old question by now, whether violence in video games leads to aggressive behavior, and a newly released study may yield some of the most concrete answers yet.
A plethora of studies have been conducted on the topic, but a recent study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking followed participants over the course of 10 years in order to analyze the longitudinal growth of violent video game prevalence in the lives of adolescents, and analyzed how that has affected their behavior. The study’s results yielded no significant link between children who play violent video games and increased aggressive behavior as they became adolescents.
In the groundbreaking study, researchers followed a focus group of 500 participants with an average age of 14 over the course of 10 years, measuring the impact of violent video games such as Grant Theft Auto on them over time. Three groups were noted throughout the study: those who initially played violent video games as children and then tapered off towards adolescence (4%), those who played a moderate amount of violent video games but began to play more over time (23%), and “low increasers” who played a very little amount of violent video games as children and gradually increased their play over time (73%).
To measure results, participants were given questionnaires meant to analyze levels of aggression. The researchers explain that it seems many of the participants’ play habits were linked to dealing with feelings of anxiety. And while many individuals consistently take various actions to limit violent video games, the study found no significant increase in aggressive behavior when comparing those who played more violent video games over time to those who decreased their violent video game play as adolescents.
Many studies have attempted to either prove or disprove the link between aggressive behavior and violent video games, but few have accounted for the amount of time in which video game habits can change, whether in the types of video games played or the amount of certain video games played. And although societal perception of video games has gradually become more favorable, it will be interesting to see the impact of this study on the issue in the future.
Source: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
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