Violent Video Games: No Effect on Kids New Study Shows… Well Maybe
Those children who spend more time playing games might be slightly likelier to be hyperactive and to get into fights.
But a new study is indicating violent video games seem to have little or no effect on children’s behavior, according to British researchers.
The scientists also said they discovered that kids who played video games for less than an hour a day were less aggressive and rated as better-behaved by their teachers.
And even if spending a lot of time playing video games every day may alter the way kids act in everyday life, “all observed behaviors were very small in magnitude, suggesting only a minor relationship at best and that games do not have as large an impact as some parents and practitioners worry,” said study author Andrew Przybylski, an experimental psychologist at Oxford University.
In the study, researchers looked at 217 teens, 110 males and 107 females, and examined both their video game-playing habits and their personalities as judged by their teachers.
Przybylski added, “There’s no way to know whether kids are drawn to video games because of their personalities, or whether video games alter their personalities.”
“But,” he continued, “the kinds of video games the kids played in the study appeared to have no effect after the researchers adjusted their statistics so factors such as gender wouldn’t have an effect.”
And there was even an unexpected benefit to playing for short amounts of time each day, the study authors found.
“Individuals who regularly played less than an hour a day of any type of game were actually less likely than their non-playing peers to fight with or bully peers and were rated as better behaved by their teachers,” said study co-author Allison Fine Mishkin, a graduate student at Oxford Internet Institute.
“This suggests that, in small doses, video games are a valuable and valid form of play which we do not need to fear.”
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A leading critic of studies linking moves and video games to violence is Christopher Ferguson, chair of the psychology department at Stetson University in Florida. Ferguson praised the study.
“It is often difficult to discern good science from overstated panic,” he said.
This new study is “in many ways an improvement over what has come before,” Ferguson added, “especially since it relies on perceptions from teachers about the behavior of kids, not the self-descriptions of the kids themselves.”
Other professionals aren’t so sure.
Craig Anderson, director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, has a different view. He said the study doesn’t say much that’s new, and he believes violent video games have been proven to increase aggressive behavior and thinking.
Dr. Claire McCarthy, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, wouldn’t go so far as to criticize video games, “we need to be a little bit careful when it comes to vilifying video games,” she said.
She added, “And we are unlikely to ever know all the answers about the true effects of video games.”
“All we can really do is use our common sense, and make sure that kids get plenty of time away from screens, too,” McCarthy said. “Playing video games doesn’t usually help kids learn the behavioral skills they need to succeed.”
The study was published online recently in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.
SOURCES: Andrew Przybylski, Ph.D., research fellow, and Allison Fine Mishkin, graduate student, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, U.K.; Christopher Ferguson, Ph.D., associate professor and chair, psychology department, Stetson University, DeLand, Fla.; Craig Anderson, Ph.D., director, Center for the Study of Violence, Iowa State University, Ames; Claire McCarthy, M.D., assistant professor, pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston; March 2, 2015, Psychology of Popular Media Culture, online
