The Impact of Violent Gaming

An anonymous reader writes "IGN has an article up looking at the impact of violent videogames. It discusses some of the rationale on the gaming industry side for having violent images in their games, and the reactions from politics and lawmakers to these games." From the article: "Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work done is correlational studies which look for a link between two factors. That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?"

Comments

Yes and no...

[Sparky2112]

I know a child psychologist working in this field. His research is pointing to something interesting, yet not earthshattering: children who play violent games outside the pervue of their parents *do* show a propensity for violent behavior. The flipside is that kids playing violent games *with* their parent's cursory involvement *do not*. This guy was ready to throw the book at games altogether, so the studies he's running came as quite the surprise, naturally.

Re:Blaming video games

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

You will learn about responsibility when you have children. I don't need a study to tell me that violent videogames are bad for chidren.