According to a new research, playing of violent video games show increase on physical aggression among children and teenagers months afterward.
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The study, which was published earlier this month in the journal Pediatrics, examines the content of the games, how often they are played and how behaviors later the school year has proved to be more aggressive. This was composed of three longitudinal studies, two from Japan and one from United States of America.
Lead author Craig A. Anderson, a psychology professor at Iowa State University and director of its Center for the Study of Violence, said that this was the first US research to look at this issue. He also cited that he chose to collaborate with Japanese researchers because video games there are very popular, yet the crime rate is low (infact, many would give Japan as an example that violent games are not harmful). Yet the studies show the exact oposite thing.
“When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you’re looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon. One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures,” Anderson said.
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The study on United States focused on 364 children whose ages ranged from 9 to 12 in Minnesota, while the research on Japan studied more than 1,200 youths aging 12 to 18. “We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents,” Anderson added.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes the study appears this month, now recognizes violence in media as a significant health risk to children and adolescents and recommends limiting screen time including television, computers and video games to one to two hours a day. They are now on the process of revising its recommendations on media violence, and expects to issue a new statement in four to six months, a spokeswoman said.
“A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games,” Anderson said. Extreme forms of violence, as he descibed, “almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors.”
The new study also noted that about 90% of American homes, with children ages 8 to 16, plays video games. And it also noted that right now, boys play them with an average of 16 to 18 hours a week.
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