Violent Video Games Make Young People Aggressive

Question

Do violent video games make young people aggressive? This is an article made by New York Times.

Answer 1

In the article linked, Kevin M. Kieffer, a psychologist at St. Leo University, claimed that he found “children exposed to virtual bloodshed showed greater ‘short term’ increases in hostility towards peers and authority figures than those exposed to benign games”. This claim however only addresses short bursts of hostile behavior, but does not suggest any violent action as a result. This article also highlights the fact that in a separate study, it was concluded that “violent video games have no ‘long term’ or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior”. This headline is misleading because short term effects can be just high cortisol levels or emotion built up from high intense situations, but there is nothing to be concerned about with short term effects. This article does not imply more alarming series of events to occur like the increased likelihood of shootings or violence, therefore there is not much significance to this study. The short term effects of video games is about as equal to the intense feelings of adrenaline one would get from watching or playing sports.

Comments

I appreciate this answer because the conflicting studies but I would also add that it was more the title that was misleading, although the author included that it was a claim, not factual. The final conclusion of the article was that graphic video games have short term effects on violent behavior but not long term, in fact, the entire article was essentially a fact-check of the above claim, even if brief and dated. I also did not appreciate the difficulty it took to find the sources in the paper, you are correct that the studies listed don't show much clear evidence of the claims being made in the article about long term or short term effects. While I'm not sure I would classify this as exaggerated or misleading due to it's inclusion of Claim in the title, it's clear that this article is not a very credible source of information on this topic, especially as it's so old.

Answer 2

The title of the article, "Violent Video Games Make Young People Aggressive," is misleading because, although the content discusses temporary increases in hostility from playing such games, it ultimately concludes that these effects are short-lived and don't lead to long-term aggressive behavior. The title suggests a definitive and lasting impact, which the article itself does not support. An Oxford University study proves how there is no lasting impact of violent video games making young people aggressive but it does show that in some mechanics and situations of gaming it can provoke angry feelings and reactions from players. (https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-02-13-violent-video-games-found-not-be-associated-adolescent-aggression)

Answer 3

I believe this is a misleading argument. Studies and researchers claim that "In general, violence usually refers to physical harm or physical acts that hurt someone– like hitting, kicking, punching, and pushing. Aggression is a more broad term that refers to angry or hostile thoughts, feelings or behaviors. So everything that is violent is aggressive, but not everything that is aggressive is violent." They release this perspective on violence to the public to reach a better understanding and later on follow that up with examples of aggression but not violence, for example yelling, talking back, and getting frustrated are all signs of aggression but not violence. Video games, especially the violent ones, have relationships with certain violent behavior due to the competitiveness level, difficulty, and pace of simulation. Yet, certain real-life tragedies have happened do to the certain influence a video game has had on youth. For example, "Two teenagers in Tennessee who shot at passing cars and killed one driver told police they got the idea from playing Grand Theft Auto III." Although they claim it was influenced from Grand Theft Auto, I believe it takes a lot more out of someone to do that then to go do it because of a video game and researcher Patrick Markey, psychology professor at Villanova University, claims, “The general story is people who play video games right after might be a little hopped up and jerky but it doesn’t fundamentally alter who they are, explaining that they could've been troubled or just affiliated with other problems. Do Video Games Cause Violence? 9 Pros and Cons (procon.org)

Comments

I appreciate your response because you bring up the subjective defenition of violence. And you go in depth about different definitions of violence in different contexts. I like how you provided examples too.