Ten years ago scholars were sure
violent video games caused aggression; it is increasingly clear the evidence never was there.
The question, I think, is not whether
violent video games cause or incite violent behavior; there are too many factors at play that render the probability quite low.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois enjoined the Illinois Violent Video Games Law and Sexually Explicit Video Games Law, ruling that the state has failed to present substantial evidence showing that playing
violent video games cause minors to have aggressive feelings or engage in aggressive behavior.
The «
violent video games cause violence» hypothesis was a not - unreasonable thing for people to worry about in the early 1990s, but 25 years later it's clearly false.
Recently, the APA task force released a meta - research study, which examined past studies about
violent video games causing aggression.
Not exact matches
I love many
violent games, and I've argued passionately before that playing
violent video games doesn't
cause real - life violence.
There's so much talk about
violent video games (again), but the research is in: science shows
violent video games do not
cause kids to be
violent.
This claim recalls similar ones that
violent video games or pornography
cause criminal behavior.
Folks have speculated that
violent video games, such as Doom or Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty,
cause aggressive behaviors in children, adolescents, and young adults.
To impute to
video games those things you say, the experiment would have to compare those randomly (in case aggressive people who lack empathy and self - control simply prefer
violent games) assigned
violent video games with those assigned non-
violent video games (to control for the isolation of gaming itself potentially
causing those effects).
«Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to
violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure
causes minors to act aggressively,» Scalia wrote.
For decades, Bozell has railed against
violent video games, believing wholeheartedly (and with little evidence) that
video games cause violence in real life.
«In tearing down similar faulty research,» the ESA say, «the U.S. Supreme Court specifically ruled that «psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to
violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure
causes minors to act aggressively.»
In fact, most would agree that
violent video games do, to a certain extent, trigger or
cause aggressive behavior.
It also resurrected the debate about whether
violent video games and music can
cause real - world violence, a debate which had been at the centre of the aftermath of the Columbine shootings six years earlier.
The recent release of Grand Theft Auto 5 and the discovery that the Washington Navy Yard gunman was «obsessed with
violent video games» has led to yet another series of media claims that
video games cause violence.