Do video games make us violent?

For many years, the media have fueled the rumor that violent-themed video games represent a risk factor very important in the development of behaviors, of the same nature, in young people.

Even for a time, it was hinted that role-playing games were very dangerous tools because their players could come to believe the character they embodied real.

Video games: do they make us more violent or aggressive?

Back in the spring of 2000, a 16-year-old brutally murdered his parents and his nine-year-old sister with a katana and, after his acts, was named "The katana assassin". Despite the seriousness of the crime, what made it tremendously high-profile was the fact that, for a long time, the The media claimed that the murderer had committed his acts since he was strongly influenced for Squall, protagonist of the video game Final Fantasy VIII, which led many people to stigmatize video games and role-playing games.

This article will not focus on how the media misrepresent information or the reactance that society shows to the technological change that video games have brought about. The text focuses on

find out the truth behind the violence-video game binomial in order to shed social prejudices and show the true correlation.

The reality of the consequences of violent video games

The reality of the matter at present is uncertain due to the lack of studies in this regard. However, the evidence overwhelmingly supports that video games are not guilty of producing violent behaviors in its players, beyond what a violent movie or a crime novel can produce.

The truth is, that over the years, the number of video games with violent content has been increasing, as well as their explicitness and realism. But it is even more true that the level of violence among young people has been decreasing considerably, in turn (C. J. Ferguson, 2010). Despite this argument, which for many would be highly enlightening about the reality of the involvement of video games in violence juvenile, there are authors who strive to demonstrate the opposite, as is the case of Anderson (2004), who published a review of several articles in which he concluded that as more studies are carried out in relation to violence and video games, the relationship becomes clearer among them.

Studies for all tastes

On the other hand, other studies carried out by the research community ensure that the relationship between video games and violence is seen highly exaggerated on a daily basis, as is the case with Tear and Nielsen (2003) who carried out three experiments trying to show that video games decreased prosocial behavior or, in other words, the performance of socially accepted actions, obtaining results that denied their hypothesis. Another example of a similar study was that carried out by Parker et al. (2013) who tried to demonstrate their hypothesis that video games and television were strong predictors of behavior problems and where discovered that this is not the case in video games.

As we see, There is a strong polarity in terms of violence generated by video games.. This polarization is built on the basis of the divergence of results shown by the different studies carried out on the relationship violence-videogames, which to a large extent could be explained from the limitations suffered by said studies and that then we will comment.

Causes of polarity in the study of the violence-video game relationship

The main fault that the results in the studies that are responsible for assessing the relationship between content video games violence and violence shown by young people, it is mostly difficult to objectify this type of research (C. J. Ferguson, 2010).

Measuring the level of violence is not an easy task and in fact, many standardized measures of violence, when push comes to shove, do not correlate at all. positive way with the real aggressive behavior, which generates that in many occasions, part of the results obtained are not one hundred percent true. In addition to this, lUnfortunately, videogames are not currently an object of study that interests large masses of researchers, so that a large part of these studies are detailed studies, with low resources and therefore, only a small part of them manage to be published in magazines or large media. diffusion. To this, it should be added that in general, the effects of third variables such as gender, genetics, social context, etc. are not taken into account.

However, the most damaging and serious of these limitations is undoubtedly the apparent effort of many authors to aggravate the results obtained, exaggerating them. or omitting those that are contradictory, in order to see their study published and doing a disservice to the research community and the development of the video game.

Psycogaming's view on the matter

Our vision of the relationship between violence and video games is clear. Our training and our experience make us see that this relationship does not correlate significantly, being a low impact factor and always taking into account the sum of other much more serious factors such as socio-cultural level or the presence of family violence.

Additionally, we firmly believe thanks to research such as that of Bartlett et al. (2009) or the aforementioned Ferguson (2010) and to the experience, that video games are about powerful tools that are capable, being used correctly, of improving and enhancing cognitive abilities such as as the creativity, the attention, the concentration and the space-visual performance, among other. In addition, they are obviously very effective leisure tools and an alternative method of make young people read and think who, today, are strongly rooted in the technology.

Bibliographic references:

• Anderson, C. TO. (2004). An update on the effects of playing violent computer games. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 113–122.
• Bartlett, P. C.; Vowels, L. C.; Shanteau, J.; Crow, J. & Miller, T. (2009). The effect of violent and non-violent computer games on cognitive performance. Computers in Human Behavior. Vol. 25, 96–102.
• Ferguson, C. J. (2010). Blazing Angels or Resident Evil? Can Violent Video Games Be a Force for Good?. Review of General Psychology. APA. Vol. 14 (2), 68–81.
• Parkes, A., Sweeting, H., Wight, D. & Henderson, M. (2013). Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment? Longitudinal research using the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Arch Dis Child Vol. 98, 341–348.
• Tear, M. J. & Nielsen, M. (2013). Failure to demonstrate that playing violent video games diminishes prosocial behavior. PLOS ONE. Vol. 8 (7), 1-7.