About 90 percent of U.S. kids ages 8 to 16 play video games, and they spend 13 hours a week doing so ( more if you're a boy). Now a new study suggest virtual violence in these games may make kids more aggressive in real life.
Kids in both the U.S. and Japan who reported playing lots of violent video games had more aggressive behavior months later than their peers who did not, according to the study, which appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics. The researchers specifically tried to get to the root of the chicken-or-egg problem -- do children become more aggressive after playing video games or are aggressive kids more attracted to violent videos? Read on...
Download violent_video_games_linked_to_child_aggression_cnn.com.pdf
When probed deeper, it becomes apparent that this study has multiple flaws. Dr. Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M University has written a response to the study, in which he noticed,
"The authors fail to control for relevant "third" variables that could easily explain the weak correlations that they find. Family violence exposure for instance, peer group influences, certainly genetic influences on aggressive behavior are just a few relevant variables that ought either be controlled or at minimum acknowledged as alternate causal agents for (very small) link between video games and aggression..."
In short, the factor of video game play was not isolated as the sole factor, and other potential factors were not controlled for or explained. Another issue Dr. Ferguson mentions is the researcher's poor definition of "aggression":
"Lastly the authors link their results to youth violence in ways that are misleading and irresponsible. The authors do not measure youth violence in their study. The [research tool used] is not a violence measure, nor does it even measure pathological aggression. Rather this measure asks for hypothetical responses to potential aggressive situations, not actual aggressive behaviors."
I would be leery of any study conducted by Craig Anderson. His dubious definitions of "aggression" and artificial laboratory experiments do not translate well to how people would behave in the real world. Politicians and advocacy groups have relied on his findings to push their agenda since 2000, and in that time, the same questions of validity have not dissipated.
I also noticed that the link to the article cuts off right at the response by Dr. Cheryl Olson. This Harvard professor has conducted her own studies, and written a book, "Grand Theft Childhood," that refutes the findings of many media-violence studies. Along with Gerard Jones' book "Killing Monsters" (have you found it yet?), I would recommend "Grand Theft Childhood to you and anyone else interested in this issue.
Posted by: Mr. Blond | November 30, 2008 at 02:42 PM