One of the most pervasive themes surrounding video games is how they supposedly incite violence. You can read or hear this on mainstream media whenever there’s a shooting incident somewhere in the US involving lone wolves. Politicians also parrot this line when they drive home the point of the supposed evils of video games. But is this belief rooted in science?
For instance, back in January 2018, in the wake of the Marshall County High School shooting, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said that people have become desensitized to death due to the pop culture. He then blamed the violence in video games, TV, movies, and even in music as contributing to the problem.
Bevin was right to be worried.
In 2017, there were 346 total mass shootings that occurred in various parts of America. Would you be shocked to know that it’s actually an improvement over 2016 where there was a total of 384 mass shootings?
But what is mass shooting? The accepted definition is that 4 or more people killed within the same timeframe (single event) and location.
How many do you think of those total tragedies can be tied to video games?
Reality Stranger than Fiction
This is the reason why psychologists and scientists have long debunked the concept that aggressive behavior is associated with violent video games.
The Society for Media Psychology and Technology in June of 2017 published a joint manifesto, which in part slammed the mass media and also policy makers for continuing to link the exposure to video games with the shootings and mass murders.
The manifesto said that there’s no scientific evidence to support this allegation and continuing to pursue this line won’t help obtain the right answers.
While there’s no clear link, the manifesto also cited several types of research that proved the lack of causal relationship between violent video games and real-life violence. In essence, your kids playing first-person shooter games won’t make them go out and purchase guns in order to shoot down people.
It cited a US Secret Service study in 2002 that revealed that lone wolf shooters in schools actually did not play much violent video games compared to the average.
The lack of a smoking gun was also tackled in a research paper by criminologists James Alan Fox and Monica DeLateur in their 2013 work, Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown. In fact, they were very clear in the word they used describing the link as a myth.
The Confirmation Bias
This pervasive thinking can be chalked up to confirmation bias. This is a psychology term which described the thought process where we only soak up the information that confirms our own biases while disregarding those that are contrary to our own views at the expense of truth.
The media can also be guilty of this. For instance, when the shooter is a teenage male, the media will then try to find out if he’s playing video games. This background checks to confirm a narrative is ignored when the shooter is female or an older man.
This was easily debunked by the manifesto as it cited that youth violence is down 80% even as the number of violent titles that flood the market has increased exponentially in recent years.
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement, which points to the more sinister effects of media violence. For instance, it said that almost every G-rated movie shows some form of violence, along with 6 in 10 of TV shows that can be accessed by kids right inside their homes.
It cited a revealing research in 1998, which showed that the average kid would have watched 8,000 killings and 100,000 acts of violence before they even reach the middle school age.
But why are video games getting the bad rap?
Effect of Video Games on Kids
With that said, it’s also not correct to say that excessive exposure to video games and other digital devices won’t cause harm to kids.
One thing that makes kids susceptible to video game addiction, in the same manner, they are vulnerable to drug and alcohol addiction, is the lack of filter. Kids don’t have yet the faculty to temper their urges with logic and good sense.
A study by Iowa State University published in 2017 revealed that allowing video games or TV inside the bedroom will drastically increase the risks of kids developing addiction and obesity issues. They also tend to perform worse in school compared to their peers.
The lead author of the study, Douglas Gentile, that allowing TV or video games in bedrooms provides kids with the license to watch what they want without adult supervision.
Dr. Victoria L. Dunckley M.D., in a paper published in Psychology Today, describes what happens to a child’s brain when playing a video game.
- The brain becomes overstimulated
- The nervous system operates at a higher level
- The heart rate increases
- Stress hormones are high
- Blood pressure is also up
- Adrenaline levels are up
- The primitive brain takes over
The reason why video games, or digital devices, is very bad for kids is they cause the brain to produce high levels of dopamine. Treatment centers know full well the relationship of drug and alcohol addiction and this feel-good chemical. The dopamine in the brain is what keeps the kids engaged in their video games for hours at end. This also makes it very dangerous because they are hyper-focused at the expense of their environment.
While they don’t necessarily shoot down people, they are aggressive in the sense that they act out their frustrations, especially when the video game is taken abruptly from them. That’s when they throw a tantrum and cry violently up until their pent-up emotions go down.
After which, they crash.
The emotions and the physiological manifestations are not unlike what alcohol and drug dependents go through in these cycles. Just imagine if you are a kid and you are going through that cycle every day? That can be hard on their young bodies and brains.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Patrick Bailey is a professional writer mainly in the fields of mental health, addiction, and living in recovery. He attempts to stay on top of the latest news in the addiction and the mental health world and enjoy writing about these topics to break the stigma associated with them.
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