Background of video games
As many technologies in the world develop, there are increasingly emerging new kinds of things that people can enjoy. One of the things is video games which have been created since the 1970s. Despite initially starting on a small scale, the video game industry has grown rapidly with the recent technological advances. As video games became a part of human leisure activities, jobs, companies, and even sports-related to them have emerged. Accordingly, an issue has also emerged about whether video games hurt children. Although the first video games were introduced in the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that after introducing a new type of video game called the first-person shooting game, there was a debate over whether video games have a harmful effect on children or not (Anderson, Buckley, and Gentile, 2007). The first shooting game makes a player feel like they become a character in the game and the goal in the game is to kill someone and fight against other users. The realism in the game made this genre one of the most popular games around the world. Along with this popularity, playing a video game, and the impact they can have on players, have been studied in many areas of scientific literature, including if violent video games increase players’ aggression or violence (Gelfond & Salonius Pasternak 2005). Unlike Television, video games allow players to play directly in aggressive fantasies, and the devices for playing video games allow to play more physical interaction (Kutner, Olson, and Warner 2008).
Why do children like to play video games?
“Children play video games to build their emotions and experiences during their playing, and they try to feel relief from their worries in the real world” (Lazzaro, 2004). In other words, they would like to escape from reality filled with stress by playing video games. According to the PEW Internet & American Life Project Research findings in 2008, 97% of teenagers aged 12 to 17 played video games, and two-thirds of them played action video games containing the violent substances. In addition, another study showed that boys were more likely to play violent video games than girls (Violent Video Games and Young People, 2010).
Is there a real relationship between video games and children’s aggressive personalities?
Playing video games can have an impact on children’s social behavior, and the effect of games can be different depending on their content (Sarah E. Domoff, … Chelsea Robinson, 2020). In other words, video games can affect youths’ social behavior in various aspects. Another research showed that repeated exposure to aggressive behavior within violent video games could automatically lead to aggressive reactions to friction or provocation against someone in the real world (Funk, 2005). Furthermore, throughout various types of studies, playing violent games has been demonstrated to be related to not just aggression behavior, also a deficiency of empathy. For this reason, there is a great worry about what kinds of games children play, as most of the games on the top-selling list contain violence (Dill, K.E., Gentile, D.A., Richter, W.A., & Dill, J.C, 2005).
This longitudinal research which investigating the relation between playing violent games and aggressive personality, proved the concern mentioned above. This study has examined how young people habitually play video games and their aggression for four years. The result of the study showed that playing violent games increased aggressive behavior over time (Adachi & Willoughby, 2016). Moreover, Psychologists Craig A. Anderson and Karen E. Dill reported a study that children who are more aggressive than ordinary children can be exposed to the effect of upgrading their aggression from violent games and also showed that even playing games for a while can temporarily raise aggressive behavior (Violent Video Games can Increase Aggression, 2000). Another research showed that competitive video games might make people aggressive in the short term. And exposure to them over longer periods can create elevated stable trait levels of aggressive emotion. For instance, repeated exposure to violent video games may cause anger and hostility more frequently and more intensely when people are faced with a competitive situation. As a result, people may suffer from greater difficulty while inhibiting this aggressive effect. It can lead to increased aggressive behavior. Therefore, competitive experiences can lead to high trait levels of violent effect. And people with high trait levels of violent affect are more likely to show aggressive behavior. It is also worth noting that non-competitive video games contain similar purposes beyond the levels of a game too. Thus, they include threats of failure that can lead to violent emotions (Adachi & Willoughby, 2016).
In addition, Douglas A. Gentile, Edward L. Swing, Choon Guan Lim, and Angeline Khoo also argued that video games were intertwined with adolescents’ violent tendencies and Impulsiveness also resulting in attention problems. To verify their argument, they gathered information by receiving longitudinal data from adolescents. Participants reported how long they played video games a day and were exposed to violent games during the data collection period. The result of the study was that playing violent video games not only affects children’s impulsiveness but also increases their attention problems. Furthermore, they also took notice of the casual relationship between playing video games, impulsiveness, and attention problems. In other words, children with more impulsive or greater attention problems spent more time playing video games, whereas more time spent playing games was associated with a decrease in attention (Gentile, Swing, Lim, and Khoo 2012).
Craig A. Anderson and Karen E. Dill suggested a case to support their study regarding the link between violent video games and human aggressive personalities. In 1999, Erick Harris and Dylan Klebold attacked people with guns at Columbine High School in Colorado, 13 people were killed, and 23 people were injured. Perhaps many factors were implicated even though nobody knows why they decided to kill people. One of their possible motives is the violent video games because they often used to play video game which was cruel and bloody. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which plays a role in tracing the Internet hatred organizations, discovered a copy of Harris’ website, a similar version of the game that he played. Two people were equipped with weapons, while the other people in the game had no weapon at all in his version. Moreover, they made a videotape for their class assignment, and its content was also similar to the game they played. They wore the trench coat and killed their fellows in the video. They eventually practiced what they did in the video in the real world for less than even a year (Craig A. Anderson and Karen E. Dill, 2000). What was the trigger of this tragedy? Of course, no one would say that it happened because of violent games. However, it could also be thought that Erick Harris and Dylan Klebold could maintain or improve their aggression or anti-social tendencies by playing violent video games. Although many psychologists have reported plenty of studies regarding the link between violent games and aggression, there is also some research regarding the connection between video games and violence is dim.
Refuting the research indicating the link between video games and children’s behavior
Wiegman and Schie (1998) provided a suggestion about an indirect connection in which aggressive video games are only associated with the children’s low prosocial behavior. In another study, the suggestion that violent video games increase people’s aggression was refuted by Ferguson, C. J. (2007). In addition, Kutner, Olson, and Warner reputed research that is often cited for evidence of the link between video games and violence, although they didn’t deny the link between them completely. For instance, the FBI decided in the case of Columbine High School that the Killers, Harris, and Klebold, were not affected by violent video games, but were influenced by their depression and sociopathic behavior. They also noted that violent juvenile crimes in the United States peaked in 1993 and have been decreasing since then, while video-game popularity has increased rapidly at the same time (Kutner, Olson, and Warner, 2008). Researchers mentioned that even though many studies implying that video games harm children’s behavior, some surveys of Japanese adolescents have indicated the connection between playing video games and social and emotional happiness (Colwell and Kato, 2003). Other researchers have hypothesized that video games that contain violent content could have benefits for teenagers (Gelfond & Salonius pasternak2005). Children’s Play, a book published by Scarlett, Naudeau, Salonius-Pasternak, and Ponte in 2004, shows that children make, break, and try to deal with rules when exploring other roles or some situations in society, containing unavoidable conflicts between their friends and parents by playing video games. In these cases, playing video games can promote children’s study of rules and results by providing situations that they had never experienced in the real world for children. Video gameplay can help adolescents’ specific needs in terms of aggression and acculturation. During the development period, a rough prank can be played to explore aggression, and status among friends is established by concentrating on becoming a leader rather than inflicting physical damage to their friends (Pellegrini, 2003). Adolescents can have a process that acquires some experiences through video gameplay, which might help them know what violence and death are rather than increasing their aggressive or violent behavior (Gelfond & Salonius-Pasternak, 2005). In other words, these researchers argued that adolescents could recognize the difference between the real world and the cyber world, suggesting some cases, such as Erick Harris and Dylan Klebold, are because of other causes, not due to video games. However, these researchers have not completely denied that video games may lead to dysfunction in some adolescents, like other activities available to adolescents (Kutner, Olson, and Warner, 2008).
Conclusion
There have been many pros and cons studies on the connection between violent video games and children’s behavior. If young people are exposed to playing video games repeatably, which leads to a variety of aggressive behavior and changes the person’s personality structure, the result might lead to an increase in aggressive influence in social interactions (Craig A. Anderson and Karen E. Dill, 2000). On the other hand, while most studies on playing video games focus on the negative effects on children, especially the potential risk caused by violent video games, video gameplay can also benefit children. These benefits include providing opportunities to recognize social roles and rules for children. By conducting violent and experimental actions in the cyber world, children might form their range and apply it in the real world. So far, there has been no answer whether video games affect children positively or not, but it is important for everyone, especially parents and teachers who are closely related to children’s daily lives, to be aware of the effect of video games on children. Thus, more knowledge of the positive and negative aspects of video game play may promote these people to decide effectively about using video games in individual environments (Gelfond & Salonius Pasternak, 2005). It is also important to check what children think about these views. Most adolescents do not believe that violent video games hurt them because they believe that they know the differences between the cyber world and the real world, and what they can do or must not do in reality. That is to say, they can distinguish between violent behavior that can happen and are unlikely to occur in their lives (Kutner, Olson, and Warner, 2008). As suggested above, there are various perspectives on the impact of video games on adolescents, however, it is important to lead children around us to be more aware of violent video games and use them in a direction that helps their development rather than arguing what is right and wrong. It is the most desirable thing adults can do today to pay attention to and solve problems faced by adolescents, to help them become more sensible adolescents.
References
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