14 DAY TRIAL // The Texas A & M University has conducted a study that shows no link between violence in video games and in television shows and real world acts of violence or even rile breaking on the part of the children that experienced them.
The study has been published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence and has been based on 302 children with the ages between 10 and 14, mostly of Hispanic background.
Each of them has been asked by the researchers whether they watched violent TV shows or whether they played video games, with the team returning after one year in order to see whether they had engaged in any crime linked activity.
The method is pretty different from that of most studies that are done on the link between violence in media and video games and changes in behavior, which tends to force exposure to stimuli and then watch for changes in how the groups actually behave.
The researchers have found that those children that played video games with included violence were not significantly more likely to go out and engage in aggressive behavior than those who did not play, when other factors linked to their socio economic conditions were controlled for.
The Texas A & M University study has found a strong link between violent conduct in teenagers and depression symptoms, mainly among those children who had personality disorders that were previously diagnosed.
Chris Ferguson, who is the lead investigator, has stated, “Depressive symptoms stand out as particularly strong predictors of youth violence and aggression, and therefore current levels of depression may be a key variable of interest in the prevention of serious aggression in youth.”
He added, “The current study finds no evidence to support a long-term relationship between video game violence use and subsequent aggression. Even though the debate over violent video games and youth violence will continue, it must do so with restraint.”