Media And Violent Video Games

Stories surrounding the possible link between children playing violent video games and later exerting aggressive behaviour have been seen gracing our headlines for many years. Columbine, Ohio and Tennessee in America have all recently experienced acts of violence with perpetrators linking their acts to playing violent video games and with around 10% of children, aged 2 to 18, playing console or computer games for more than an hour per day (Rideout et al., 1999) it’s no wonder that the concern for our youths is growing. Violent video games first became popular in the 1990’s with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. The main intention of these games were to wound, main or kill others within the game. A common criticism of these types …show more content…
Possible evidence for this theory comes from Dittrick et al. (2013) who found a positive correlation between a child’s likelihood to bully (online or in person) and their favourite video games being of a violent nature. However, this research could also be used as evidence behind the arousal theory which believes that engaging with any media excites the individual and they then interpret this excitement as aggression due to the violent nature of the media as the children in this research may have mistaken their excitement for aggression and therefore felt like they needed to release this emotion on …show more content…
(2010) with 130 studies analysed and over 130,000 participants used, increasing the findings validity when being generalized to the general public (ecological validity)(?? – find out types of participants used. True or biased?). They found that exposure to violent video games not only increased aggressive behaviour but also aggressive cognition and affect. This could be linked to the desensitisation theory which believes that repeated viewing of violent media leads to a change in cognition with a reduction in emotional response to violence on the screen and to an increased acceptance of violence in real life. This increase in aggressive behaviour was found in three different variations of research design: experimental (lab based) – controlling for outside variables and increasing validity, cross-sectional – further increasing ecological validity as findings were observed in a natural setting, and longitudinal – showing that the side-effects were not merely short-term. However, the longitudinal studies showed only casual effects between exposure to violent video games and aggression and the meta-analysis itself included unpublished research within its conclusions. This is an issue as Beumeister, Dewall & Vohs (2009) note how unpublished works are not subjected to the same rigorous testing of validity or research ethics that published articles are put through. Anderson et al. (2010) also provided little