Violent video games and aggression in adolescence: Is there a link?

When thinking of tragedies such as the Columbine school shooting, everyone looks to point fingers to get down to the root of the problem. This is human nature; trying to solve problems by finding root causes is normal, many people would say that issues that would lead to a violent crime like the sandy hook school shooting would have been formulated in their childhood. Many of these shooters are stereotypically Nerdy, quiet, and tend to play lots of video games such as “Call of Duty” or “Grand theft auto” this is alarming; these video games tend to be violent yet leave people wondering if there is a link between violent video game exposure in adolescence. For one it makes sense that violent video games could be the cause, after all, they do raise stress levels and desensitize children from violence that should be disturbing. They also stimulate the release of cortisol and adrenaline; two key neurotransmitters involved with aggressive behavior, and this leaves people thinking why someone would want to play a game where they are shooting and killing people? With all the evidence that violent video games could be the cause, there’s a lot of evidence suggesting they do not correlate with violence. Violent video games do not cause aggression in adolescent individuals and may even be stress relieving.

Violent video games have a long history of being blamed for violent crimes through many different mechanisms. The article violent video gaming and aggression in children by Shainy B is an article to test the actual effects of video games on aggression. In the article, the author Shainy states many reasons why violent video games could be the cause of aggression. One example she uses is the fact that many soldiers are trained to be desensitized to violence by using violent video games as a method of doing so, and therefore the same thing could be happening to children who play these games daily, “video games are used to help prepare soldiers for gun violence on the battlefield, train soldiers and children who play the games repeatedly to be vigilant of enemies, and teach them it is acceptable to respond aggressively to provocation” (Shainy B. 2). Which could be a cause of concern since people in the military actively use guns in combat, the desensitization process is a cause of concern for children who would be playing the same video games the military would use to desensitize their recruits. Despite this fact being present, it’s safe to say that the military probably has access to more equipment such as VR headsets and surround sound that would make the soldier feel as they are in combat, they also more than likely don’t use the same video games that gamers would be playing and are probably developed for the specific desensitization process. Another point that Shainy uses in their argument is the fact that children tend to follow their role models, this includes fictional characters such as those found in video games, “Children encode behaviors of their role models they observe and imitate them.” (Shainy B. 2). This can be a cause of concern because if children try to behave like violent characters, it could lead to problems down the road for them, so the fear of children acting violently by playing these games has some backing to it.

Violent video games do not increase aggression in adolescence and could instead be therapeutic to everyday stresses. The article Digital poison by Christopher J. Ferguson argues that violent video games have inconclusive evidence to suggest that violent video games would lead to aggressive behaviors in people. The Article speaks on the reasons why violent video games are thought to cause violent behaviors, a huge reason that sparked this fear is that “causationalists” as Ferguson called the group of people who believe violent video games are the cause, noted that the two shooters involved in the columbine school shooting were avid gamers of the popular first-person shooter known as DOOM, “the social narrative linking mass shootings to video game violence likely crystalized by 1999 when it was revealed that the two shooters of the Columbine High School massacre were both avid players of the sci-fi/horror first-person shooter game Doom”(Christopher J. Ferguson). To the group of causationalists, this is solid proof to point fingers at violence in games being the cause, but is this the case? If video games are the reason for school shootings, shouldn’t many more shooters also report playing plenty of violent video games such as DOOM?

Video games don’t increase the risk for violent actions, millions of adolescents happen to play violent video games every day and only a very small amount of them end up committing violent crimes such as school shootings, it’s statistically inaccurate to draw any conclusions about violent video game effects. The article digital poison also talks about how both violent and nonviolent video games were found in the shooters’ house, “both violent and non-violent games were found in the shooter’s home, the report noted that the perpetrator spent most of his time playing non-violent games such as Super Mario Brothers and Dance, Dance Revolution”. Speaking that the shooter spent most of his time playing nonviolent video games, it’s easy to break the connection between violent video games and aggression.

Younger children also shouldn’t be playing these types of games until they are older anyway, but the evidence to suggest that this is the case is lacking, in fact, many children who play violent video games would still get punished for acting out in a violent manner and therefore the behavior would be quickly extinguished. On top of that, there is evidence to also suggest that violent video games could be stress relieving.  In the article competitively vs cooperatively? An analysis of the effect of gameplay on the level of stress found from Ewoldersen et al. that playing violent video games cooperatively with others decreases arousal and violent cognitions (Roy and Ferguson). This shows evidence that violent video games in certain cases could be stress relieving such as cases where you’re playing as a team. This was even shocking to some of the people involved in the article who ran these tests as their hypothesis was it would increase stress and aggressive tendencies. The way violent video games reduce stress is said by Ferguson and Roy to be due to the sense of control along with feelings of autonomy the gamer feels, which makes sense because video games are a fantasy world where the player can do whatever they please; some limitations will apply due to what the programmers allow.

Violent video games do not cause aggression in adolescence, the effects of these types of games could be due to the competitive nature and may be stress relieving to the individual. Since the rise of violent video games such as first-person shooters, these games quickly became alarming to thousands of people on the effect it would have on adolescence. Violent video games do not cause people to act more violently and could be stress relieving depending on the type of violent game. Next time you are stressed out or worried, it might just be time to go pick up that new hot game on the market and enjoy it with friends, without worrying about the effect it would have.

Works cited

Ferguson, Christopher J., et al. “Digital Poison? Three Studies Examining the Influence of Violent Video Games on Youth.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 50, Sept. 2015, pp. 399–410. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.04.021.

Roy, Amanda, and Christopher J. Ferguson. “Competitively Versus Cooperatively? An Analysis of the Effect of Game Play on Levels of Stress.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 56, 2016, pp. 14–20, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.020.

Varghese, Shainy B. “Violent Video Gaming and Aggression in Children.” Pediatric Nursing, vol. 48, no. 4, July 2022, pp. 193–96. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=158882569&site=ehost-live.