“Juvenile Violence Linked to Video Games and Television Indicates No Correlation”

The omnipresent argument concerning today’s youth focuses on the idea that video games could become detrimental to their innocent psyche.  A few decades ago, a similar argument was made; however, instead of trepidation with 8-bit video games, it was concerned with violent programs on television. It may seem like a logical conclusion to believe that children who play video games are more susceptible to violent behavior compared to children who watch television, however, other factors, such as individual personalities or lifestyles, may be the root of their evil – not the technology itself.

Video games would seem to have a greater effect on children compared to television because of the substantial interaction between the user and the product. The logic is simple: since children are heavily enveloped in video games, there’s a greater probability that they would be more susceptible to imitating the violence. However, according to Patterson, who wrote “Video Games Don’tMake Teens Violent, Shows Study”, children who played violent video games were not exhibiting hostile behavior compared to non-video gamers. He then concluded that playing these video games seemed to have a “cathartic” effect, in which some children were seen to have dropped aggression behavior. This proves that video games do not cause violent behavior among children, therefore showing no correlation between the two factors.

The Bobo Doll studies, developed by Albert Bandura, determined that children who watched violent episodes on television would likely exhibit violent behavior, such as punching the Bobo Doll. But one important factor that is overlooked is the fact that these experiments were conducted in a laboratory setting, leaving researchers to question whether children maintained their violent behavior at home. This begs the important question: do interactive technological mediums, regardless of their strength, cause children to become violent? Or does it have to do with other factors beyond the technological realm, such as their lifestyle at home? Indeed, Bandura determined a correlation between violent programs on the television and aggressive behavior, but results of children acting perpetually destructive in their daily lives because of television are inconclusive.

 Many of today’s youth culture is surrounded by violence, depicted not only in highly interactive mediums such as video games, but also passive mediums such as television. In a society in which technology is constantly involved in everyone’s lives, video games and television are not as effective in affecting media users as much as it did in previous years.

References:

Patterson, Sean. “Video Games Don’t Make TeensViolent, Shows Study”. 27 August 2013.

McIntosh, S., Pavlik, J.V.. Converging Media. (Bobo the Doll Experiment).