Study reveals video games don’t make people more violent
Long-term research reveals that playing video games doesn't increase homicide rates as they were long assumed to do.
Major new research published in the Journal of Communication shows that there is no significant relationship between exposure to violent video games and long-term violence, The Guardian reported.
A psychologist at Florida's Stetson University, Christopher Ferguson, and his team conducted two separate studies in which they evaluated and compared data from the 1920's until 2005. In the first study, researchers compared US homicide rates and depictions of violence in the movies. The results showed that there wasn't a real correlation between exposure to violence through media, and acts of violence in real life. The head researcher, Ferguson, said that previous studies that showed a correlation between the video games and real-life violence might not be reliable. He said "The degree to which laboratory studies faithfully capture the media experience is also debatable. Many such studies provide exposure to only brief clips of media rather than full narrative experiences, in which violence exposure is outside of a narrative context. The resultant aggressive behaviors are also outside a real-world context, in which the aggression appears to be sanctioned by the researches themselves, who provide the opportunity for aggression," the Guardian reported. Video games had been under increasing public scrutiny especially after the Columbine High School killings. The mass shooting was carried out by teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who were believed to be playing violent video games obsessively. In a press statement about the new research, Ferguson said that addressing the real reasons of crime and violence such as poverty, education and vocational disparities and mental health is extremely important, and blaming video games would only distract our attention and resources.
In the second study, violent video game consumption and youth violence in the last two decades were compared and the results were really interesting. The study showed that during this period, the acts of violence carried out by young individuals between the ages 12-17 actually fell.
