No, violent video games do not cause violent behavior
As the video games industry rapidly expands with new gaming systems and updated technology, The effects of violent games on children have been a topic of great concern among parents and even national governments for the past years. Mass murders or grisly killings have been regarded as this issue. An example of this is the devastating school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a former student, Nikolas Cruz, killed 17 people. Soon after the incident, ex-president Trump said that violent video games and movies may play a role in school shootings. Episodes like the previously mentioned claimed that violence in music, movies, TV, and obviously video games was to blame. However, the evidence does not support the claim, scholars say.
One new research, led by Aaron Drummond from New Zealand’s Massey University, re-examined 28 previous studies that look at the relation between aggressive behavior and video gaming. The report found a very small positive correlation between these two and therefore concludes that the research is unable to support that video games sustain significant effects on youth violence. “long-term impacts of violent games on youth aggression are near zero”, they write.
According to NewZoo, a gaming research company, about 60% of the youth population plays video games in Japan, a number that contrasts with the 49% of the gamer population in the US. Following the belief that video games cause violent behavior, should not Japan also have a high youth aggression rate? Nevertheless, there were just six gun deaths in Japan in 2014, while over 33,000 in the United States. If video games cause mass violent episodes there should be a massacre in every town in the world. The existence of other influential elements might be the most significant incentives agents on the origin of these aggressions such as arms sales Policy, bullying, and abuse at home, among others.
The other point refers to analyzing video games as an art expression. While it is true that not all video games can be considered masterpieces, music, film, or literature present these kinds of flaws too. As soon as we start understanding video games as an art expression, we are able to approximate them to other forms of art in which violent displays are typically seen and widely accepted. Music, theater, literature, and films have the highly consumed and popular ‘Action’ genre in their catalog. And that is because art can be violent because humans, as well as caring, pacific, astute, or ugly, can also be violent. Art is a reflection of our inner world and a tool to express ourselves. In Jungian psychology, among the four major archetypes, we can find the Shadow. This archetype consists of sex and life instincts as part of the unconscious mind. In other words, our repressed and most unacceptable, not only to society but also to one’s own personal morals and values, features of ourselves. Acknowledging that Psychology has shown us that repressing is a very unhealthy way to deal with our ‘Shadow’, why should not violence in art, therefore in video games, be considered a healthy and beneficial manner to deal with that part of ourselves? Playing violent games will not make us more aggressive but it can rather work as a therapeutic tool to help us integrate and accept our ‘Shadow’ without harming anyone. One thing is to be a violent person and another to be a pacific person conscience of oneself capacity to be violent.
At present, there is no determining evidence to identify violent video games as negative changer behavior. Instead, we can find that an overwhelming number of recent researches conclude that the link between aggressive behavior and video gaming is minimal and therefore, not sufficient to regard mass murders as a consequence of gaming. Likewise, psychological studies have positively contributed to the tone that video games and their contributions to people were perceived in regard to our mental health. Video games can be now considered a form of art and therapeutical tool too. Yet, I believe that it is necessary to not forget that previously mentioned estimations are based on circumstances that exclude cases of kids with mental disorders, domestic abuse, excessively violent video games, and others.
Sources
Maya Salam and Liam Stack (2018). Do Video Games Lead to Mass Shootings? Researchers Say No. The New York Times (Online)
Alex Hern (2020) Playing video games doesn’t lead to violent behavior, study shows. The Guardian.
