Violent Video Games Linked to Child Aggression?

This is my RWMC for Curtin.
All content is not for profit and is used in an educational sense.

This Explainer video focuses on the Media and its connection with negative connotations on violent video games.

Script:
The decade long question faced by parents, do violent video games make your children more violent? Before we delve into this issue its important to understand the history of video games and how they have developed with time. 65 years ago, the concept of video games was not a general thought for most individuals, entertainment was found in the form of physical board games and broadcast television. However, one visionary in October 1958, William Higinbotham sparked the beginning of the gaming industry with his creation.

The American Physical Society describes it as ‘a very simple tennis game, similar to the classic 1970s video game Pong’. The game featured a ball that was bounces back and forth with no scoring system. APS continues to explain how ‘The game’s circuitry was fairly simple, using mostly resistors, capacitors and relays…’ These simple mechanisms were the spark of the video games we as an ever growing technologically advanced society have continued to expand upon.

A significant change from this previously limited analogue game platform has arisen as the world continues to digitise and transform the technological industry. Straying away from the traditional methods of exchanging game cartridges and compact discs to a simple purchase and download on applications such as steam, PlayStation store and even mobile stores. It is this expansion that has led to convergence of technology, streaming capabilities and overall, the discoverability of these games in a previously niche industry.

The main argument that has been speculated amongst the growth of the video game industry has been the link between if violent games really influence a child’s capacity to be more violent. Instead, it is also established that the media has manipulated an insignificant statistic or case to run a story. ‘The tendency of news media to place a lot of focus on acts of extreme violence, which are statistically rare, can give the impression to the public that the threat these events pose is far greater than it really is…’ (Burns & Crawford, 1999).

Research from the Dana foundation states that there is “little evidence that playing such games introduces violent criminal behaviour.”(Dana Foundation, 2017). Similarly, a peer reviewed study from The Royal Society concludes ‘that mere exposure to, and enactment of, putatively violent virtual acts in gaming contexts in aggregate is unlikely, on its own, to bear positively on perceivable differences in adolescents’ aggression in real-world settings’(Royal Society, 2018).

While the concern from parents is genuine, it is highly presumed that the media has spun a story to allude to the connection between video games and violence. Especially, arisen through the mass school shootings in America which were used as a tool for blame. While there are many articles that provide the extremes, it is clear that video games pose little to no impact on a child’s capacity to be more aggressive, instead these tendencies are driven through their own negative context and may at most have a insignificant link to their behaviour.

This video is protected by Creative Commons and comes under the Fair Use Act for educational purposes.

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