“An Update on the Effects of Playing Violent Video Games” by Craig A. Anderson was the first scientific write up we’ve had to read. This made it very difficult to comprehend. The article was published in the Journal of Adolescence and it is very clear that the audience for it was scientists and physiologists. The reading was filled with high-end vocabulary and the way he followed the scientific process in attempting to sort out his findings. Anderson first introduces to past findings that have taken place with the use of violent video games and discusses their shortcomings. He thing begins to explain to the reader how his meta-analysis is being sampled and what factors he is looking for. He outlines the experiment and finally discusses his results and what they all mean.
The most important information I gathered from Anderson appeared in the last five pages. The results clearly stated that playing violent video games was associated with increases in four of the five variables he was testing. The only variable that had a decrease was helping behavior and that also was a cause for alarm. The five variables he tested for included aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and physiological arousal. All four of these increased when kids and teenagers played violent video games. None of the variables tested contained zero in a 95% confidence interval meaning the data is not statistically significant, meaning they did not occur by chance. I took statistics last year so I am familiar with evaluating data in scientific results. Based on these results, Anderson states three facts about violent video games in his discussion, but I believe the effect video games have on children is quite overstated.
The knock on violent video games is that they make children violent and disturbed. I completely disagree. I believe it’s the parent’s fault and not video games, television, or even music. My brother and I grew up playing Grand Theft Auto, watching movies with psycho killers and gore, and listening to Eminem, but none of these things have influenced our lives in the slightest. People who are crazy and had distraught childhoods do things like Columbine and bombings. Killing people in a video game should not make a child go insane unless he is brought up in a household here he or she already hanging on by a thread. I believe video games and music and movies can push a person into doing awful things, but it’s the parent’s job to keep them from ever getting that close to the edge.
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