The Analysis Of Research Of Video Games
With 2018 being a record year for most mass shootings with 8 of them occurring and 2019 to be on track to math or surpass the record (Thometz), people are questioning why this is occurring. Politicians have pointed their fingers at video games as one of the primary causes. President Donald Trump stated in a White House address on two mass shooting that, “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace” (Trump). Likewise, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also stated on Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” that, “We’ve watched from studies, shown before, what it does to individuals, and you look at these photos of how it took place, you can see the actions within video games and others” (Wu). One statistic even shows how 65% of adults believe video games contribute a great deal to gun violence. This number is even higher among people who are 65 and older, with 82% of seniors seeing a connection (). A lot of people seem to believe that video games have some effect towards gun violence. This paper investigates if there is any correlation between violent video games and the increase in mass shootings. It is apparent to me that violent video games are not a cause of the increase in mass shootings. Blaming something that isn’t the answer only makes the problem worse. We need to find out the real cause of these events and figure out a way to lower that statistic. First, lets go over what a violent video game is, what identifies as a mass shooting and the characteristics of a mass shooter.
California law has defined a violent video game in where “the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” (California Civil Code, sec 1746-1746.5). All violent video games are marked with an ESRB Rating M for mature which signifies that only people who are 17 and above can play this type of media. The ESRB was originally created as an answer to children playing that featured high gore content and scenes that were sexually suggestive and exploitive (Kohler), which attributed to the publics worry. Soon after, various study on video games and aggression, had concluded that violent video games can increase a person’s violent tendencies compared to the typical entertainment
“A research review done by NCTV in 1990 found that 9 of 12 studies on the impact of violent games on children reported harmful effects. Some professionals speculate that performing violent acts in video games may be more conducive to children's aggression than passively watching violent acts on television” (Bernard).
Studies like this combined with gore filled games created a negative stereotype against violent video games. This could be a reason as to why the media is very quick to blame social violence problems on video games (Kocurek). Now with a definition of violent video games, let’s turn our attention to mass shootings
Mass shootings currently have no legal definition. Although, various studies have been done on the perpetrators that carry out mass shootings. The FBI claims that these “mass shooters” all fit a similar character profile in a document titled “The Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States”. This document covers the case of 63 active shooters and goes into length about the findings on subjects involving mass shooters such as demographics, targeting, firearm acquisition, and concerning behaviors. The FBI found that a specific set of concerning behaviors were associated among the mass shooters they observed. The numbers refer to the amount of mass shooters out of 63 and the percentage represents the percentage of those affected out of the 63-case pool. If violent video games truly do lead to more mass shootings, then they would have to cause or increase one of these behaviors. Let’s look a look on how violent video games affect aggression.
Christopher J. Ferguson, an expert in the field of media and psychology created a longitudinal study on the relationship between aggressive video games and youth aggression. A longitudinal study is defined with this quote.
“Longitudinal studies employ continuous or repeated measures to follow particular individuals over prolonged periods of time—often years or decades. They are generally observational in nature, with quantitative and/or qualitative data being collected on any combination of exposures and outcomes, without any external influenced being applied” (Caruna).
He had sampled 3034 youth and gave the participants various surveys to fill out. He then assessed for any links between being exposed to aggressive gameplay and various prosocial and aggressive outcomes 2 years later. He had concluded from his study that violent video games were not a risk factor for youth aggression (Ferguson 846). Similarly, a study done by two professors compared levels of aggressive behavior in adolescents who play violent video games to those who don’t. They sampled 1004 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 15 and gave them and their guardians an online questionnaire to fill out. They then tested for correlations between several variables. They had found from the results that violent video games did not relate to aggressive behavior (Przybylski and Weinstein 12). The FBI had found that physical aggression was in the top 10 of concerning behaviors. As we can see by these two studies, violent video games do not seem to have any effect that would increase aggression or cause it. This can also be connected to the other concerning behaviors that were listed. Anger, quality of thinking, and threats/confrontation are all linked to aggression (Aggression). One thing to note about these two articles is that they’re both registered reports. Registering a report, in short, means prior to collecting data, the introduction and methods of your paper is shared with other. This form of verification aims to dispose of the publication bias of publishing positive results (“Pre-Register Your Research Study?”). With this tool, researchers are encouraged to publish null or unexpected results. This is especially important in the case of violent video games and aggression. The consensus among majority of the population is that violent video games do increase aggression, so researchers are more inclined to fall into publication bias to back this up. With registered reports, researchers are given then chance to truly see the effects of violent video games on aggression. We can now see how violent video games don’t seem to have any effect of aggression. Therefore, lets move on to another concerning behavior, mental health.
Mental health in the context of a concerning behavior is defined as so. “The stressor “mental health” indicates that the active shooter appeared to be struggling with (most commonly) depression, anxiety, paranoia, etc. in their daily life in the year before the attack” (FBI). If a violent video game truly is the reason for the increase in mass shootings, then they would have to feed the disorders that were named. A group of researchers have produced a first of its kind longitudinal study on the effects video games have using a large battery of tests. One of the things they had tested for was mental health which includes depression and anxiety. 90 participants played 35 hours a week of a video game assigned to them for a span of two months. At the end of the two months, they had found no relevant negative effects in response to playing violent video games (Gallinat). Likewise, Christopher J. Ferguson had released another study on the effects of violent video game exposure on depression and hostile feelings. This time, Ferguson had tested 60 people in a laboratory setting, giving them an assigned game to play. Data was collected and the results were that depression and hostile feelings were neither increased or decreased. We can clearly see how once again; violent video games do not feed into negative mental health. Mental health was listed as the highest concerning behavior with 39 out of 63 people being affected by it. With a connection this big, its very easy to see how there’s no relationship between the two topics. But how are people with prior mental health issues affected by video games?
In the FBI’s report, they had made a statement about prior mental health issues. “In this context, it is exceedingly important to highlight that the FBI could only verify that 25% (n = 16) of the active shooters in Phase II were known to have been diagnosed by a mental health professional with a mental illness of any kind prior to the offense” (FBI). Thankfully, studies have been done to investigate this. Christopher J Ferguson had tested 377 children with clinically elevated levels of depression to see if violent video game usage would negatively affect them more than the average person.
“Results from our study found no evidence for increased bullying or delinquent behaviors among youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms who also played violent video games. Our results did not support the hypothesis that children with elevated mental health symptoms constitute a “vulnerable” population for video game violence effects” (Ferguson 1).
Connecting this to the remark about prior mental health issues made by the FBI, we can see how violent video games don’t affect people who had prior mental health issues. A clinical councilor has once said that playing video games for 30 minutes everyday can help alleviate clinical depression and anxiety. She reports that effects of doing this has the potential to match the effectiveness of medication in a month while developing the habit (Smuz). Now that the majority of concerning behaviors have been disproven to be affected by violent video games, let’s look at if violent video games usage appears in real world crimes and violence.
With stereotypes in mind, it would seem obvious that over usage of violent video games would result in increased crime and violence. Studies have shown that is actually not true Patrick M. Markey had written a paper for the American Psychological Association that compares data of real-world violence and violent video games. reaches a not so surprising conclusion based on the new data he found. “Contrary to the claims that violent video games are linked to aggressive assaults and homicides, no evidence was found to suggest that this medium was positively related to real-world violence in the United States” (Markey and French). Markey had surprisingly noticed that there was a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games. Another paper had been put out that supports this surprising information. A researcher had compared the volume of sales of violent video games from 2005 to 2008 and the weekly aggregate violent crime incidents. They had noticed something surprising. Whenever a popular violent video game had released, violent crimes had gone down (Yglesias). This could be shown as common sense as when popular games are released, people are too busy playing them to do any crimes. With similar results, another study had looked at any connections between media violence and violent crime. They had looked at violent blockbuster movie releases and compared them to same-day assaults. They had found that violent crime had been reduced by 2% (Dahl and DellaViona). This again plays into how people are too busy being occupied by something else to commit any crimes.
There are studies out there providing evidence saying that aggression is indeed caused by violent video games which leads into more mas shootings. The APA had recently stated,
“The American Psychological Association (APA) considers violent video games a risk factor for aggression.[1] In 2017, the APA Task Force on Violent Media concluded that violent video game exposure was linked to increased aggressive behaviors, thoughts, and emotions, as well as decreased empathy” (Lauren)
The problem with this is that the aggression that most papers talk about is benign and short term. “Laboratory and correlational studies often find a link between violent video games and minor or benign forms of aggressive behaviors” (Patrick 1). Most of this aggression never manifests itself into something dangerous and is only short term. Also, if this statement that video games increase mass shootings, then we must assume that the more video games available to the public would mean more violence would come about. We can see here in this graph how the US is the only country to have such a high homicide rate when comparted to the populations video game spending. If more video games equaling more violence was true, countries like Japan and South Korea should be at the top of the graph, but rather they’re countries with the lowest homicides by firearms. Its clear that violent video games are not the cause of mass shootings, so what could be?
The National Council for Behavioral Health had very recently released a report on mass violence titled “Mass Violence in America”. In this report, they talk about the similar characteristics of mass shooters. I’ve too the liberty to pick out some of in order to find a way to combat them properly. The National Council states these similarities between perpetrators.
“• All were male. • Twenty-three attacks were with firearms, three with vehicles, two with knives. • Fifteen attackers had histories of substance use disorders. • Twenty attackers had prior criminal histories, nine with domestic charges or police responses. • Eighteen had prior histories of violence. • Eighteen had mental health symptoms prior to attack (one-half psychosis, one-third suicidal ideation and one-fifth depression), with seven individuals having prior known mental health treatment “(NCBH).
In my opinion, we can work on these in an attempt to decrease the rate of mass shootings. We can tighten gun control laws in order to stop these kinds of people from obtaining firearms. Australia saw a decade free of mass shootings after a new gun law was put in place that banned semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession (Alpers). We can also mandate background checks to all firearm sellers. This would not allow people who suffer from substance use disorders, have prior criminal or violence histories, or mental health symptoms from obtaining these dangerous weapons. Connecticut had seen a 40% reduction in gun homicides when they passed a law requiring handgun background checks for a purchase permit (Background Checks). The mass shooting surge seems to have a solution. I believe its time that we start looking at things can actually fix the problem. Video games are not to blame. They come with benefits too.
Many benefits of playing video games have been noticed. Most basic video games improve coordination, enhances multitasking, and is a great source of learning (Engels). Online video games have a whole different set of benefits. Personally, I learned a lot by playing multiplayer games just by talking to new people and listening to new opinions. It translated to me being more charismatic in the real world because online gaming had given me the opportunity to talk to more people than I usually would. One study has even shown that video games can improve graduate skills. Graduate skills are known to be desirable skills wanted in the workforce. Results from this study had shown that communication, adaptability and resourcefulness had all significantly increased after playing video games. By seeing the bright side of video games, we can start using them for the good and reap the benefits that they provide. The current stigma around video games makes them unattractive to the public eye when, video games can actually provide a lot of helpful benefits. I also do play my own fair share of violent video games, but they’ve never caused me any negative mental health issues, increased aggression, or any of the negative effects mentioned before. This also goes for every other person I know who plays video games. I find playing these games to be a nice past time and not anything negative.
The US mass shooting epidemic is still ongoing to this day. Many people believe that violent video games act as the primary cause for it. With the research provided, its clear that violent video games are not a cause at all. When looking at what makes mass shooter go through with his crimes, we can see how video games do not affect those traits. Video games is seen not to increase aggression, prior mental health issues, and cause negative mental health issues. Statistics show no relations to real life crime and violent video games and a decrease was even shown. We need to find the actual causes of the mass shooting epidemic and make sure things like this don’t happen again. Instead of pointing fingers, we need to take a hard look at what’s right and what’s wrong or else it will continue to grow and harm more of our people.
