Video game effects on aggression and addiction in children and youth

Computer Games Research

When considering the short history of computers, video and PC gaming are very recent on the timeline of technology. This is one of the reasons why there have not been many conclusive studies on the negative and/or positive effects of electronic games on children and young adults -- the most formative years. With the ever-increasing interest and involvement of children in this activity, much concern has been expressed about the impact of these games, especially ones of a more violent nature, on physical and psychological development. At the crux of the debate is the question of whether they are detrimental to a young person's health. There are specific concerns about such factors as aggression, addiction, criminal activity, obesity and reduced academic achievement.

Studies thus far show both positive and negative results from playing video and PC games. Some research finds that the playing or observing of violent games does affect young children negatively, with increased levels of short-term aggressive behavior. Further, some children exhibit addictive behavior and become less sociable and less academically capable. Other studies suggest that computer games have little or no impact on factors such as aggression and can even be a positive educational tool.

A number of problems have been recognized with most of the research done to date. These include concerns with cultural differences, varied choice of games used in the research, the studies' short-term focus and failure to consider whether game-playing has longer-term effects and objections to the research methodology. Such concerns show the need for more research into the long-term effects of computer games on children and youth is required.

This paper will present a review of some of the literature that both supports and negates the use of computer games for children and youth. Because the studies to date have been very broad -- a wide range of games, ages and backgrounds -- the literature review here will be as varied. As noted above, this is a major concern of game playing studies. The report will then proceed in providing the methodology of a possible study to look at the longer term impact of video games. Middle-school boys will play a video game that has been deemed violent (through the rating and number of defined violent incidents) and be tested for aggressive factors immediately after the game and then again at a later time. A control group will also be tested.

VIDEO GAMES AND VIOLENCE

In 1978, the Japanese company Taito & Midway introduced a tall cabinet full of electronics and bright 14-inch screen for the latest offering in electronic entertainment. For years, other companies had played with the concept of the "video game." No one had achieved widespread success. So, there was not much interest in Taito & Midway's latest venture. It was called "Space Invaders" and consisted of a simple black-and-white game where the player shoots aliens in spaceships. It even had disturbing sound effects. Despite its simplicity, the world has never been quite the same since. The space invaders did, indeed, take over the earth. This nondescript game made an everlasting impact on the development of every computer and video game to come. As with some modern games, it invited controversy and was almost banned. Yet, it also created a new cultural event and language, as well as changed generations of entertainment to come.

At first, the video games reflected traditional themes of children's literature including fantasy, horror, and adventure stories or backyard play such as space exploration and sports. Such interests contributed to the popularity of early console games such as "Super Mario Brothers," "The Legend of Zelda," "Sonic the Hedgehog," and "Megaman." However, the success of the gaming companies rose and fell. In the late 1980s and early 1990s firms such as Nintendo, Sega and Sony decided to establish electronic games as a central feature of American childhood and significantly increased their marketing efforts.

The growing popularity of computer games stimulated a certain degree of research interest. Although Funk identified computer game playing as a relatively high frequency activity among adolescents, most studies were related to who played (males over females) rather than why they played. Then, when the gaming companies began their marketing push and fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat and Streetfighter II, became best sellers, more educators and researchers began to take notice of this new form of entertainment.

Little research had been conducted on non-arcade electronic game playing, because it was originally recognized as a harmless and enjoyable pastime. However, with the ever-increasing interest and participation of children, concern increased about the effects of these games on psychological and physiological development. People began requesting some form of empirical investigation and, if necessary, the banning of the more violent games for youth.

Since then, some research has suggested that computer games cause physical or psychological harm. These studies conclude that some form of short-term correlation exists between playing violent computer games and an increase in aggressive behavior. In addition, several studies have provided support for the argument that computer game playing is potentially addictive (Anderson and Ford) or leads to criminal activity. Others have claimed, to the contrary, that such games offer creative and prosocial applications, with emphasis on physical rehabilitation (Lynch), educational value (Silverne) and the improvement of social interaction and growth (Favaro). These researchers argue that the aggressive content of computer games actually provides an outlet for the players to release stress and aggression in a non-destructive way. It even relaxes them (Bowman and Rotter; Kestenbaum and Weinstein).

Ever since children began spending as much time playing video games as watching television, the individuals who were concerned about the growing violence of cartoons and other children's programming also started becoming anxious about electronic games that include violent themes. This led to the hypothesis that children may become more aggressive after playing such games (Koop; Zimbardo). Researchers such as Provenzo began categorizing the various forms of violence that can be used in these games. In some cases, humans must defy and destroy other living beings or aliens and/or avoid being killed. In other cases, humans fight with make-believe or fantasy characters. In a large number of games, the violence or aggressive behavior is in related activities such as sports such as karate and wrestling. Provenzo concluded that the content of popular Nintendo games contained a major violent element in 40 out of 47 games. Kirsh investigated the effects of playing a violent vs. A non-violent video game. After playing these games, third- and fourth-graders were asked questions about a hypothetical story. On three of six questions, the children who had played the violent game responded more negatively about the harmful actions of a story character than did the other children. These results suggested that playing violent video games may make children more likely to attribute hostile intentions to others.

Anderson and Dill recently published the results of two studies that examined violent video game effects on aggression-related variables. Study 1 found that real-life violent video game play was positively related to aggressive behavior and delinquency. The relation was stronger for more aggressive individuals and men. Academic achievement was negatively related to overall amount of time spent playing video games. In Study 2, laboratory exposure to a graphically violent video game increased aggressive thoughts and behavior. These results are consistent with the General Affective Aggression Model that predicts that exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive behavior in both the short-term and the long-term

According to Calvert's arousal theory, players of violent video games become physiologically aroused through exposure to the level of violence presented. They have increased activity in brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance. After habituating to that level, the players become desensitized from overexposure to aggression, requiring higher levels of aggression to be aroused. Based on the principals of this arousal theory, Anderson and Bushman developed the "General Aggression Model," stating people who play violent video games develop aggressive beliefs and thoughts that predispose them to future violent behavior in real life.

D'Andrea takes a broader approach to the study of video gaming and violence, noting that Americans are violent in general so that no one should be surprised that this form of entertainment is enjoyed. He notes:

Although it may not be a popular perspective to articulate, the history of the United States clearly suggests that we are a violent nation. Today, new forms of violence surround us. This includes but is not limited to domestic and sexual violence that women and children in all segments of our society experience, violent images that are portrayed in the media and video games and violence that is manifested in a variety of ways in school settings (e.g., teasing, bullying, fistfighting, shootings).

He adds that Walker and Gresham pointed out that "Violence in America is a social toxin that is pervasive in every aspect of our society that has lowered the quality of life for everyone." For the first time since 1970, violent acts against strangers account for a higher proportion of violent acts than those committed against acquaintances. This development among others means that public safety has declined precipitously and that no one has complete immunity from the possibility of physical victimization by violent acts.

However, not all researchers have found a positive relationship between video game playing and violence. For example, Goldstein states that studies do not necessarily demonstrate the actual effects. "Some social psychologists argue that playing violent video games causes aggressive behavior, among other things (desensitization to violence, disinhibition of violence, belief in a 'scary world,' acquisition of cognitive schemas supportive of aggression). Three types of evidence are said to converge in support of this conclusion: correlational studies, field studies (which are typically correlational in nature), and laboratory experiments." Correlational research, he adds, can relate nothing about whether violent video games cause aggression. Even if it is accepted that a correlation exists between amount of time spent playing violent video games and aggressive behavior, there is no reason to think that games are the cause of aggression. Furthermore, some correlational studies find no significant relationship with aggression (Sacher; van Schie & Wiegman).

Not only are there inconsistent results, when two researchers will study the impact of a violent game such as "Mortal Kombat" and find opposite results, but there are no regularities in definitions. For example, studies of violent video games do not always distinguish aggressive play from aggressive behavior. Observations of children on the playground may confuse mock aggression, such as pretending to engage in martial arts, with real aggression or actually trying to hurt someone. Confusing aggressive play with aggressive behavior can lead to faulty conclusions.

Measuring violent behavior is also extremely difficult and inconsistent. It is not possible to observe real aggression in the laboratory, so researchers must improvise indirect measures and indicators of potential aggression. Some of the dependent variables used in video game research include:

Hitting a bobo doll (Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gordon & Rodasta)

Coding children's interpretations of ambiguous stories (for example, a child is hit in the back with a ball). Responses were coded for the amount of negative and violent content (Kirsh).

OTHER NEGATIVE IMPACTS

It has been suggested that computer game addiction is like any other behavioral addiction, in that it consists of compulsive behavioral participation, a lack of interest in other activities, association with other addicts, and physical and mental symptoms when attempting to stop the behaviour, such as the 'shakes' (Soper and Millar).

Likewise, there is a concern that video game playing leads to greater obesity, which is a growing problem in Western countries. Children with higher weight status spent moderate amounts of time playing electronic games, while children with lower weight status spent either little or a lot of time playing electronic games," notes Vandewater and colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin in an article in the Journal of Adolescence.

Moderate play, while it sounds benign, can have a great impact, given the large number of American children who play electronic games. The Vandewater surveyed 2,831 children age 1 to 12, recording their media habits and calculating body mass index, a ratio of height to weight that indicates how fat or thin a person is. While both television and video game play can be considered sedentary activities, video game play was related to children's weight status while television was not. This may mean that video game play, but not television use, is indeed displacing the time children spend in more physically demanding pursuits.

Researchers in Japan have noted another physical problem with game players, as well. According to the latest research from this country that introduced video games, prolonged periods playing with game consoles can lead to decreased brain activity and cause users to suffer from severe emotional and behavioral problems. The study, conducted at Tokyo's Nihon University, has revealed that people who spend long periods playing video games demonstrate less activity in the prefrontal region of their brain -- which governs emotion and creativity -- than their peers. Researchers claim that side effects can include loss of concentration, an inability to control temper and problems socializing or associating with others.

During the study, which involved 240 people aged between 6 and 29, Mori recorded and analyzed the brainwaves of each test subject. He then separated the beta waves, which indicate liveliness and tension in the prefrontal region of the brain, from the alpha waves, which most commonly appear when the brain is resting. The beta waves in the brains of those who rarely played video games were always stronger than the alpha waves their brains emitted, and little change was shown when they started playing a game. Subjects who spent between one and three hours each day playing games for three to four days a week, however, had roughly equal alpha and beta wave activity before they began playing. Once a console session had begun, their beta wave levels rapidly decreased to well below the level of alpha wave activity. "Many video games stir up tension and a feeling of fear, and there is a very real concern that this could have a long-term effect on the autonomic nerves," said Mori. However, this study has yet to be verified and published.

OTHER POSITIVE EFFECTS

According to proponents, children often play video games in groups, and social status is accorded to the youths with the highest scores. Arcades are packed with groups of boys and girls supporting one other as they follow on-screen dance cues for the game "Dance Revolution." Also, livingrooms are host to groups of children playing after-school or weekends on the XBox or Playstation 2. In his Journal of Communication article "Playing Video Games: The Electronic Friend," Selnow concluded that video games actually helped to socialize heavy players.

According to studies, 67% of teens participate in online gaming, which combines online, real-time chatting with game play. Both the Sony Playstation 2 and the XBox allow users to play on a TV-and-console set-up, as well as to go online to play with other gamers. GamePro magazine's Dan Amrich described the ability to play online with other enthusiasts as "awesome... If you can have four friends over and four other people across the country, that's a double communal experience."

Similarly, the teamwork between opponents builds up new skills needed in this competitive world. The human factor associated with online gaming creates more unpredictable opponents and challenging antagonists, far better than any artificial intelligence can be. Having stronger competition challenges one to think intelligently and act quickly. It is often a challenge of intelligence rather than who has the fastest trigger finger. Online games also teach practical strategy and tactics. In games such as "Command and Conquer" and "Warcraft II," one must decide upon both an offensive and defensive tactic, such as "concentrate your forces on the weak points in the enemy's defense" or "mobility is very important." It is often not a case of who is the strongest offensive force but who has created the best defense to sustain such attacks. Through repeated playing, the participants learn strategy from experience and from observing others.

It must be stressed how video game cause-and-effect studies have provided rather inconsistent results for the better part of the twentieth century. Some have argued that this should lead people to conclude that the question of media effects simply cannot be answered in a quantitative way. They often emphatically make the case that many, but not all, of these studies suffer from a lack of theoretical support. They question, why should behavioral effects be expected?

It appears that disciplines are severely divided on the subject. While some psychologists and other researchers continue to devise studies to determine the answer to the impact of video games, many media and communication professionals seem satisfied to considering it unanswerable and unscientific and too variable to be ultimately determined.

STUDY METHODOLGY

One of the concerns with video game studies is determining the long-term results of violence on the players. A number of researchers have looked in different approaches and with different tools into the short-term impact. Therefore, the proposed study for this present report would look at longer term results. The hypotheses would be: Violent video games have short-term negative effects on children players' aggressive behavior; Violent video games have long-term negative effects on children players' aggressive behavior; Violent video games have no effect or positive effects on children players' aggressive behavior in short or long-term.

A study would be designed to determine whether or not violent video games have a positive long-term effect on middle-school students' behavioral and emotional aggression. It is hypothesized that exposure to a violent video game would not have a significant impact on measures of aggression in the long-term. Fifty-12-year-old students would be randomly assigned to one of three groups. To reduce variability as much as possible, only male students would participate. They would all came from the same school from a middle-class neighborhood, and they would answer "1 to10 hours of video game playing a week," in response to the question: "How many hours of video games do you play each week?" Unfortunately, it would be too difficult to determine how much of those 1 to10 hours are playing games that are non-violent to those that are more violent in nature. The three groups would be:

1) (Control Group) Participants would be tested without playing a video game.

2) Participants would independently play a violent game for 30 minutes and then be tested immediately after playing.

3) Participants would independently play a violent game for 30 minutes and then be tested one hour after playing. The interim time would be spent getting a snack, chatting, etc.

In this case, violence in a video would be defined as "any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings. Violence would include certain depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate being/s that results from unseen violent means" (Smith et al., 30). A video game would be chosen that fell into this definition.

Each of the groups would be measured with the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) by Arnold H. Buss and W.L. Warren. The test would measure the amount of aggression of players after 30 minutes (and then in another hour) and determine if they are more apt to connect hostile meanings to words deemed to be violence neutral by the researchers. The 34-item AQ measures a respondent's self-perceived levels of aggression and anger. The instrument is often used to provide a measure of treatment need or treatment outcome. The AQ has been used in clinical, school, business, military, correctional, and hospital settings for individual treatment planning and program evaluation.

This report believes that there may be some higher aggressive behavior noticed immediately after the game is played, but that would not be significant. Further, after an hour, the aggressive levels would not be high.

CONCLUSION (Marketing Efforts)

Video games are now older than 30 years of age. The industry that started with "Space Invaders" has become a multi-billion dollar worldwide enterprise. The growth of the industry is both matched and driven by the technological advances. Every year, the graphics and capabilities in video games become more complex. The increasingly realistic and exciting nature of electronic games has helped to make them enormously popular with children and youth. About 80% of American children now play computer or video games on a regular basis. Children between the ages of seven and seventeen play for an average of eight hours a week. Most of the games on the market are appropriate for these young players, and the best of them can bring a lot of benefits. Besides being fun, some of the games provide practice in problem solving and logic as well as strategizing.

As a marketer of video games, it is necessary to stress a couple of things to adult consumers who will be buying the items for their children. First, video games come in a wide range of types from educational to sporting to military. Thus, some are more violent than others. The rating on the box will help parents make some decisions on what is appropriate for their child, if they do believe in video games as a whole. Second, there are a number of myths about video games, which are only accepted by the most avid anti-video game opponents (Jenkins).

1) The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.

First it was movies that caused concern, then television and now video games. According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It is true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. However, young people in general are more likely to be gamers --90% of boys and 40% of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do not commit antisocial acts.

2) Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.

Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent a relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." This research includes numerous studies of media violence. However, most of these studies are inconclusive and criticized on methodological grounds. In such studies, media images are removed from any narrative context and participants are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment.

3) Children are the primary market for video games.

While most American youth do play video games, a large number of older adults play as well. Already 62% of the console market and 66% of the PC market is over age 18. Meanwhile, a large number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids. One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M (Mature)-Rated game as among their favorites. More should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media choices they are facing. However, parents have to help by making decisions about what is appropriate for their children.

4) Almost no girls play computer games.

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of females playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. In fact, women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games.

5) 6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.

On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection. As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts from four games, all within a narrow range of genres and all the subject of previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted:

Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware. To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it.

7) Video game play is socially isolating.

Much of video game play is social. Almost 60% of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25% play with spouses or parents. Even games for one player are frequently played with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for many players for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players.

Studying the effects of video games is not easy, especially since there are so many different variables such as age, culture and upbringing of the child, degree and type of violence in the game, amount of time spent playing the games and others. This is one of the reasons why results to date have been mixed. Not all children will become violent after playing an aggressive or violent video game. Some will be more aggressive under some circumstances. Others may become more assertive. While it would be helpful to educators and parents who want to make a decision about children's viewing habits to have a black-and-white answer, it is so far impossible.

Thus, no simple conclusion is possible. Although it does appear that aggressive or violent video games cause some increase in aggression in some children, it is unknown, when this will occur, if at all, for any given person. In conclusion, video games are a major part of life today in many countries. They provide enjoyment and other benefits such as improved perceptual and motor skills. They might increase violence under some circumstances, although many can play aggressive or violent games with no apparent increase in aggression. However, it would seem to be a consideration that those already predisposed toward violence find it easy to become more violent prone when faced with violent images, whether in video games, in the media, or witnessing it in their homes and neighborhood. This is surely another area where parents or caregivers will need to make a decision based on their own child's personality, interests and needs.

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