The Impact Of Violence In Television And Video Games On Society

Over the past two decades, one of the most controversial topics of discussion has been whether violence in television and video games affects society and real life. While some people still believe there are direct effects between the two, others have been firm believers against it. There has been a considerable amount of research done, proving there is no direct effect. This research has included looking at aspects such as a person’s prosocial behavior after gameplay and the influence of violent video games as a whole. Furthermore, a recent study performed by the University of Oxford and the Oxford Internet Institute has shown there to be no link between violent video games and increased aggression.

Within the University of Oxford and the Oxford Internet Institute’s study, a total of 2,008 subjects were sampled. This included British 14-to-15 year olds as well as an equal number of parents and guardians. However, the study’s use of both subjective and objective data to measure teen aggression and violence in video games has made it one of the most comprehensive studies to date. During prior research on the subject, self-reported data from teenagers was conducted. Instead of using that data, the study used information from the parents and carers as the primary way to determine the level of aggressive behavior in their children. Moreover, rather than using the player’s perception of the amount of violence in a particular game, the study classified the content of the video games using the PEGI and ESRB ratings systems (Barder, 2019). While this study takes a broader approach to the topic, other research goes into more specific aspects.

In a three year longitudinal study of adolescents, researchers tested whether video game violence has influences on dating and aggression. The participants were 165 mainly Hispanic families consisting of equal gender participants aged 10-14. During the study, they were tested at three intervals including the initial interview, the one-year mark and at the end of the three years. This testing involved the children answering a video game violence questionnaire and questions about negative life events while parents filled out a Conflict Tactics Scale to measure family violence. The results indicated that although some level of aggression was seen across youth, the level of aggressiveness was mild in most cases. Moreover, video game violence could not be linked to either child or parent reported pathological aggression. However, the three exposure periods portrayed a significant correlation with reduced dating violence (Ferguson et al., 2012). When other variables were controlled, that relationship did not hold though. These individual sets of results backed up other scholars’ expectations in that links between video games and aggression are the secondary result of other aspects occuring in the child’s life (Ferguson et al., 2012).

For a long period of time, there had been controversy within the scholarly community and the general public on the role of violent video games in the development of mental health issues and aggression. Within the article, three studies were conducted to examine violent game play in children and teenagers aged 12-18 (Ferguson et al., 2015). The first study had featured random participants that were chosen to play similar action games with either violent or non-violent content. While the second study was similar conceptually to the first one, it featured slower narrative games rather than action ones. Furthermore, the third study was more complex in that it contrasted exposure to violent video games in the participant’s personal lives to their exposure to violence in controversial books. This study had also controlled other variables including those involving family, peers and personalities. After completing the three studies, it was found that playing violent games did not increase the participants’ aggression in Study 1 and Study 2 while it had a minimal impact in Study 3. Moreover, violent games and books did not predict aggression or civic behavior. In regard to the other findings, the children and teenagers who played violent games did not show a change in empathy towards others. Additionally, those with prior mental health symptoms were no more influenced by violent games than those without the symptoms. Outside of focusing on mental health and aggression, research has looked into prosocial behavior.

In a study regarding video games and prosocial behavior, Tear and Nielsen (2014) recruited participants who played video games at least once a week. This included 120 undergraduate students from a first-year introductory psychology course at a large metropolitan university. Within these 120 participants, 67.5% were Caucasian, 87.5% were male, and the average age was 19 years old. During the study, the participants played either a non-violent, violent or ultra-violent video game and then were assessed on two measures of prosocial behavior. This included how much they donated to a charity and how difficult they made a task for an ostensible participant. If playing violent video games led to increases in antisocial behavior as other studies had stated then it should also lead to decreases in prosocial behavior. However, the results found that participants responded in similar ways, regardless of what type of game they had played. This shows that increasing violence to ultra-violent levels has no effect on prosocial behaviors. For example, those who played an ultra-violent game donated similar amounts of money to charity compared to those who played a non-violent game. They were also just as likely as to set a straightforward tangram task for an ostensible participant. Moreover, when looking at the suspicion scores to the four debrief questions, there was no difference in scores between the video game conditions.

Within Ferguson’s (2011) study, a prospective analysis in adolescents was conducted to see the connection between violent video game and television exposure and youth violence. This was done by examining cross section data on correlates of youth violence in 603 mainly Hispanic youth from a past study. In the past study, results had indicated that depressive symptoms, peer delinquency, antisocial traits and parent psychological aggression had been the top predictors for concurrent aggression and violence. Ferguson (2011) had his study focus more in-depth on clinical and criminological outcome measures as it would assist in illustrating the possible impact of violent game and television exposure on violent crime among youth. In his results, it was discovered that current levels of depressive symptoms was the most significant risk factor for youth violence. Furthermore, there was a link between depressive symptoms and antisocial traits. This was due to individuals with preexisting antisocial personality traits often having the most pronounced influence of depression. In regard to video game and television violence exposure, neither were found to be direct predictors of serious acts of youth violence.

In recent years, television and video game violence and whether they affect society and real life has become a controversial topic of discussion. However, outside of Ferguson’s (2011) study, not much research has gone into television violence and its effects on society and real life this century. Instead, much of the focus has been on violent video games. After reading through four separate studies, violent video games did not demonstrate a link to children having increased aggression or affecting their prosocial behavior. Instead, it pointed to other aspects in their life as possible causes of any violent actions. Therefore, one can conclude that video games do not play a role in what goes on in society and people’s lives.