Do video games cause violence?

The gaming industry has long since overtaken Hollywood and the film industry, and now currently counts profits of over 180 billion US dollars. About 73 percent of American children between the ages of two and 17 play video games.

Video games in pop culture have been under the spotlight of researchers, politicians, and concerned parents for years when it comes to the connection of video games with violence, that is, violent behavior. In addition, violent video games have been cited as the cause of mass shootings, murders, a spike in cyberbullying and violence against women.

What is violence and what is aggression?

In order to better understand and answer the question of whether games cause violence, it is important to distinguish violence from aggression. You will often come across "aggression and violence" as one inseparable concept. It is true that aggression and violence often coincide, but they are, in fact, two different things. Violence refers to extreme physical aggression intended to cause serious harm. In other words, aggression does not always involve violence, but violence always involves aggression. Thus, violence is a deliberate display of aggression through physical force.

In a large number of studies...

There is a very large amount of research on this topic. Namely, in 2014, a meta-analysis by researchers at the University of Innsbruck in Austria shows that there is a connection between increased aggression in players. On the other hand, a year after that study, new research published in the American publication "Psychology of Popular Media Culture" suggests that playing violent video games does not encourage physical aggression.

Most researchers claim that previous research is dubious and contains invalid data, that is, that the parameters used in the research were wrong.

This narrative has been present since the early beginnings of video games. Oxford University showed in a 2019 study that there is no connection between gaming and violence. Principal Investigator, Oxford Professor, Andrew Przybylski points out that the idea of ​​video game violence causing aggression in the real world did not pass their test.

Are video games the real cause of mass shootings?

After major incidents, the blame usually falls on video games, in addition to other entertainment content. Katherine Newman, rector at the university John Hopkins, explains that millions of young people play games that contain blood and shooting on a daily basis, but that only a small number of players become violent.

Patrick M. Markey, director of the scientific research laboratory at Vilioanova University, emphasizes that 90 percent of young men play video games. Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as meaningless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks.

In addition, gun violence is less present in countries with a high percentage of video game use. A study conducted in ten of the world's largest video game markets found no link between video game playing and gun-related homicides. Although gun violence in the US is high, the nine other countries with the highest rates of video game playing have some of the lowest rates of violent crime (and eight of those countries spend more per capita on video games than the United States).

Fun content and desentization

There is another consequence when it comes to entertainment content. Katarina Kacer in his book "Cyber ​​Psychology" explains the concept of lack of empathy during frequent and large consumption of content that contains violence, murders and other morally distorted things. More specifically, when people frequently watch violent scenes, they may become less sensitive to other people's suffering and thus become more apathetic. This is not only the case with video games, but also with brutally violent movies and series. Research conducted by an American scientist and neurologist Jordan Grafman confirms that there is a danger for male teenagers to become emotionally numb due to frequent consumption of apparently real film material with scenes of violence. In this case, the area of ​​the brain (orbitofrontal cortex) that is in charge of acting as a brake on aggressive behavior becomes significantly reduced, i.e. numb.

According to Kacerova, personal characteristics also play a certain role. In children, the ability to weigh intensively what they have seen and to include moral aspects is not yet very pronounced.

Does violent video content lead to a criminal career?

One of the questions that arises when it comes to violence in gaming is surely whether violent video games (or violent video clips) lead to the other side of justice. Let's look at the problem of videos with violent content. The spread of violent content is not only a youth phenomenon. Studies Peter Grim show that videos of violence are particularly widespread among young men with lower education. As Kacer states, in low-educated households there are usually no rules and authority, that is, there is no good role model who would critically review the content on the Internet, whether it is a video game, a video or the media. Criminologist Christian Feiler in his research clearly shows that violence among young people, which very often represents the first step towards a later criminal career, is a problem that is primarily social, political and a problem of education and environmental policy.

The other side of the coin - where can we see empathy?

Video games that are categorized under the label of storytelling have an incredible power to awaken emotions such as empathy, compassion and encourage us to think about positive changes. Some of these games include: The Last of Us, Life is Strange series, Brothers: The Tale of Two Sons.

Chat trolls, flaming, cyberbullying

One of the factors that cannot be avoided when it comes to online games is the presence of other players and the possibility of chatting. Take for example the popular strategic competitive game: League of Legends. Although the game itself does not contain "graphic content" full of blood and violent scenes, the players of this game have been characterized as toxic. Most of that toxicity (figuratively speaking) stems from frustration in chatting with other players, where we usually see swearing and cyberbullying. The player of such a game, which does not cause aggression in itself, can take on some of the "toxic" characteristics, according to his attitude. As Katarina Kacer explains it: our online presence and our words on the screen carry enormous weight, without us even realizing it.

Parental control

Each family chooses for itself what content it consumes. Recently, the term "parent control" has become popular again, where parents have control over their children's devices, and thus limit the content they consume.

Conclusion

The answer to the question of whether games are made by violent people is very complex and still under-researched (compared to how much it should be). What is certain is that there is currently no connection between violence and video games. It would be said that everything is in accordance with the character, the society in which the person grew up, the presence or lack of authority. In addition, when we talk about desentization, we cannot say that every game is violent. As we mentioned, there are a large number of games with warm themes that can open our horizons, whose genre is oriented towards "more beautiful" things, which encourage empathy, thinking and logic.