Study: No link found between violent video games and teenage aggression

As someone who played violent video games when I was younger, this seems obvious to me, but I'm glad someone has done serious study on it. People seem to blame video games for teen violence a LOT in the U.S.

Playing violent video games has no link to teenage aggression, new research has found.

A group of British teenagers, picked to be representative of the UK, were assessed and evaluated for gaming and aggressive behaviour in the month leading up to taking part in the study.

The behaviour as noted by their parents and carers was also collated.

Lead researcher Professor Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute told Sky News: "What we found was that there are a lot of things that feed in to aggression.

"There are some effects of gender and some people who are from different life backgrounds have higher or lower ratings, but video game play didn't really see to matter here."

https://news.sky.com/story/violent-video-games-not-linked-to-teen-aggression-11635881

It all starts with parents. You make a good child by putting in the time and by age eleven, when they go off to senior school, they should be good humans ready to be good adults.

The Japanese are not very violent, and they play a shit ton.

And porn doesn't cause people to rape either.

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:As someone who played violent video games when I was younger, this seems obvious to me, but I'm glad someone has done serious study on it. People seem to blame video games for teen violence a LOT in the U.S.

Playing violent video games has no link to teenage aggression, new research has found.

A group of British teenagers, picked to be representative of the UK, were assessed and evaluated for gaming and aggressive behaviour in the month leading up to taking part in the study.

The behaviour as noted by their parents and carers was also collated.

Lead researcher Professor Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute told Sky News: "What we found was that there are a lot of things that feed in to aggression.

"There are some effects of gender and some people who are from different life backgrounds have higher or lower ratings, but video game play didn't really see to matter here."

https://news.sky.com/story/violent-video-games-not-linked-to-teen-aggression-11635881

Did they even have video games when you were younger?

Maddog wrote:The Japanese are not very violent, and they play a shit ton.  

And porn doesn't cause people to rape either.

Exactly.

Maddog wrote:

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:As someone who played violent video games when I was younger, this seems obvious to me, but I'm glad someone has done serious study on it. People seem to blame video games for teen violence a LOT in the U.S.

Playing violent video games has no link to teenage aggression, new research has found.

A group of British teenagers, picked to be representative of the UK, were assessed and evaluated for gaming and aggressive behaviour in the month leading up to taking part in the study.

The behaviour as noted by their parents and carers was also collated.

Lead researcher Professor Andrew Przybylski, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute told Sky News: "What we found was that there are a lot of things that feed in to aggression.

"There are some effects of gender and some people who are from different life backgrounds have higher or lower ratings, but video game play didn't really see to matter here."

https://news.sky.com/story/violent-video-games-not-linked-to-teen-aggression-11635881

Did they even have video games when you were younger?

You're older than me, grandpa.

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Did they even have video games when you were younger?

You're older than me, grandpa.

I know. I had Pong. Not much violence with a ball bouncing off of a line on a green screen.

Maddog wrote:

>THE Ben Reilly< wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Did they even have video games when you were younger?

You're older than me, grandpa.

I know. I had Pong. Not much violence with a ball bouncing off of a line on a green screen.

Shit, in my day, Mario was stomping on mushrooms and kicking turtles willy-nilly. We were pretty hardcore.

Re the op... it's hardly a conclusive study...!

Tommy Monk wrote:
Re the op... it's hardly a conclusive study...!

Because....?

Tommy Monk wrote:
Re the op... it's hardly a conclusive study...!

Tommy, do you think violent content in the media makes people, teenage or otherwise, more violent than they otherwise would be?

eddie wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:
Re the op... it's hardly a conclusive study...!

Because....?

Because... from what I have read... this 'study' was just looking at a relatively small group of teens who were already regular xbox/ps/pc 'gamers', and by all accounts had been regular gamers for a very long time already... and from what I can see, the scope of this study was very narrow minded in that it was trying to find a link between any single session of gaming then leading to a violent/aggressive display within a certain observational period of time directly after the gaming session... rather than trying to assess the overall picture...


Surely the only real way to assess the impact of console/pc games, would be to have a core study group who had never experienced any such gaming... and then to split the group into two... and continue to assess them both over a period of weeks/months... where one group was allowed to play xbox/ps/pc games while the other group carried on as normal without access to any gaming sessions...


And then see if there were any noticible differences between behaviours of the two groups...!





Funnily enough... when I was reading the article in the op link... there was an ad that popped up for another article, which said this...


"Video game loot boxes blamed for rise in young problem gamblers

Popular games like FIFA 19 allow players to spend extra money on blind purchases with the chance of acquiring valuable items"

Have you actually read the study or the news article Tommy?

Hang on dont bother, we have seen your selective stance on knife crime studies many prove that stop and search is ineffective and even worse where knife crime has been reduced in Scotland, where you ignore all new methods. That brought a reduction in crime. 

For all those that actually wish to read the study, here it is

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474

Thor wrote:Have you actually read the study or the news article Tommy?

Hang on dont bother, we have seen your selective stance on knife crime studies many prove that stop and search is ineffective and even worse where knife crime has been reduced in Scotland, where you ignore all new methods. That brought a reduction in crime. 

For all those that actually wish to read the study, here it is

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474

I did my own study.

Japanese, lots of video games, little violence.
ISIS, very little video games, lots of violence.

Maddog wrote:

Thor wrote:Have you actually read the study or the news article Tommy?

Hang on dont bother, we have seen your selective stance on knife crime studies many prove that stop and search is ineffective and even worse where knife crime has been reduced in Scotland, where you ignore all new methods. That brought a reduction in crime. 

For all those that actually wish to read the study, here it is

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474

I did my own study.

Japanese, lots of video games, little violence.
ISIS, very little video games, lots of violence.

Interesting point

Perhaps being deprived of modern music, pornography, literature outside the realm of holy books, and the sight of even an inch of female skin in public also has the damaging effect of turning people into willing self-sacrificers

Also, and this is purely the grammar nazi in me, but are 'very little video games' referring to mobile gaming

Eilzel wrote:

Maddog wrote:

I did my own study.

Japanese, lots of video games, little violence.
ISIS, very little video games, lots of violence.

Interesting point

Perhaps being deprived of modern music, pornography, literature outside the realm of holy books, and the sight of even an inch of female skin in public also has the damaging effect of turning people into willing self-sacrificers

Also, and this is purely the grammar nazi in me, but are 'very little video games' referring to mobile gaming

With very tiny screens.

There were groups of violent teenagers around when I was at school in the 1960s and'70s...

They had pinball games and arcade games;  some came from bad or broken homes, some were easily influenced by their more sociopathic leaders -- and sometimes their rages were further exacerbated with alcohol and weed..

And there are there are still sub-groups of violent teen's out there today.

These days, however, besides easier access to games via computers and smartphones, there are also more 'broken homes' , more slack parents, more antisocial/anti-science/"me, me, me" thinking, and easier access to harder drugs -- ice, speed, ecstacy, mystery 'synthesised' poisons..

this supposed link always seems silly, what game where they playing to start the crusades

besides which there have been no world wars since the invention of video games so like maddog suggests the immediate evidence seems to point in the opposite direction

Some human beings have been violent ever since the invention of rocks

It's quite comforting to know that according to this study there is no link between playing violent video games and real life aggression in youngsters.

I cant help but feel though that the isolation of playing these games hour after hour must have an effect on them, also wouldn't it desensitise them to real violence when they actually do come across it in real life?


A bit like porn can turn women into objects and watching too much of it can change the way a person might feel about actual flesh and blood women in real life...constantly seeing someones head blown off could affect a persons empathy gene in real life...…..maybe?

I think if you’re prone to violence then it doesn’t matter what you watch or play, you’re just going to be violent.

I sometimes really enjoy a violent movie or TV show, aggressive music, etc. Some people tell me I have a "tough" look, too (some people) but I wouldn't hurt a fly, really. I would have to have a very specific set of circumstances to get violent, and it would have to be protecting my loved ones.

Syl wrote:It's quite comforting to know that according to this study there is no link between playing violent video games and real life aggression in youngsters.

I cant help but feel though that the isolation of playing these games hour after hour must have an effect on them, also wouldn't it desensitise them to real violence when they actually do come across it in real life?


A bit like porn can turn women into objects and watching too much of it can change the way a person might feel about actual flesh and blood women in real life...constantly seeing someones head blown off could affect a persons empathy gene in real life...…..maybe?

A lot of Modern games tend to be online multiplayer, particularly those that get accused of having a link to violence. the young ones probably consider it far less isolating than not having their phone for a few hours
it's actually getting quite hard to find good games built around a single player experience (it's hard to sell you loot crates and other junk if your not competing with other people) and the old school Multiplayer games where everyone sat together on the couch and played on the same screen are almost non existent now.


And I don't think it does, from experience I have seen a lot of death and gore in computer games ...... It didn't desensitize me to seeing someone hit by a train. the reality of it is still quite different. Some people may have issues but I think they were always going to be 'odd' they are the same sort that become crazed stalkers etc, where they can't distinguish fantasy from reality.

veya_victaous wrote:

Syl wrote:It's quite comforting to know that according to this study there is no link between playing violent video games and real life aggression in youngsters.

I cant help but feel though that the isolation of playing these games hour after hour must have an effect on them, also wouldn't it desensitise them to real violence when they actually do come across it in real life?


A bit like porn can turn women into objects and watching too much of it can change the way a person might feel about actual flesh and blood women in real life...constantly seeing someones head blown off could affect a persons empathy gene in real life...…..maybe?

A lot of Modern games tend to be online multiplayer,  particularly those that get accused of having a link to violence. the young ones probably consider it far less isolating than not having their phone for a few hours
it's actually getting quite hard to find good games built around a single player experience (it's hard to sell you loot crates and other junk if your not competing with other people) and the old school Multiplayer games where everyone sat together on the couch and played on the same screen are almost non existent now.


And I don't think it does, from experience I have seen a lot of death and gore in computer games ...... It didn't desensitize me to seeing someone hit by a train. the reality of it is still quite different. Some people may have issues but I think they were always going to be 'odd' they are the same sort that become crazed stalkers etc, where they can't distinguish fantasy from reality.

Yes, you are probably right.
I admit I love scary films, and the weirder the better.
I just watched all 19 episodes of black mirror in less than a week, but i still feel pretty normal.