Violent Video Games Might Be Good for Civics

A study looking at violent video games and their impact on gamers coming from the Texas A&M International University has offered some interesting results showing that, in some cases, playing titles like Call of Duty, Halo or Gears of War can lead to more civic engagement from players.

The discovery was made by Christopher J. Ferguson, who is an associate professor at the Texas learning center, and his study is aptly named "Call of (Civic) Duty: Action Games and Civic Behavior in a Large Sample of Youth."

The data comes from another study conducted in 2008 which followed video games and civic engagement in a sample which was 1,102 young people big.

Ferguson narrowed that down to the 873 of them who listed violent games as being the titles they mostly chose to play and found something interesting when listing the parent – child pairs by using the parents engagement in their kids gaming experiences.

Those children who have parents that were involved in their game playing were actually exposed to more violence, because their parents knew what they were exposed to, but it seems that the presence of violence has not lead to any bad effects, but to a bigger chance of them engaging in civic action, probably also because of the way their parents contextualized violence and its effects.

The civic engagement effect was also higher for girl gamers and for older teens, who are becoming more attuned to the society they are becoming part of.

Interestingly, those who played video games but lacked the supervision of their parents were less likely to participate in civic actions but increased their online social involvement, probably because of the cooperative aspect required by multiplayer shooters of the current generation.

The study is important because it shows the big effect that the parents of children can have both on their gaming habits and on their behavior.