Despite the news published by the scary press and the usual demagoguery of politicians and educators, the violence is increasing every day in almost all the countries of the world (with their natural statistical peaks). And its greatest reduction coincides, in fact, with the arrival of video games .
Therefore, the best-designed studies have found no causal evidence between violent video games and actual violence. A new study by Agne Suziedelyte, Senior Lecturer in the City Department of Economics, University of London, confirms this .
Video game launch
The study examined the effects of violent video games on two types of violence: aggression against other people and destruction of things / property . Econometric methods that identify plausible causal effects of violent video games on violence were also employed, rather than just associations.
The study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, focused on children ages 8 to 18, the group most prone to playing violent video games .
No evidence was found that violence against other people increased after the release of a new violent video game. Parents reported, however, that children were more likely to destroy things after playing violent video games. As Suziedelyte explains:
Taken together, these results suggest that violent video games can agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people, which is the type of violence that concerns us most. One likely explanation for my results is that video games generally take place at home, where opportunities to engage in violence are lower. This ‘disabling’ effect is especially important for violence-prone children who may be especially attracted to violent video games.
You can delve into more evidence of how video games could even be reducing violence in the following video, which highlights the fear of some parents that their children are imitating the games of the trendy Netflix series: The Squid Game .