Video games don't turn teenagers into psycho killers

A new study shows you should blame the parents instead

A new book published by a couple of Harvard boffins reckons that video games are really not to blame if your child turns out to be a deranged and psychotic mass murderer.

The Harvard Medical school husband and wife team, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, published their study findings in a new book aptly entitled: "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do". In it, the pair write that that there is really nothing to support all the hysterical allegations about video games corrupting today’s youth.

The study took a somewhat ‘hands on’ approach, with the researchers putting more emphasis on talking to video game playing kids about their feelings, rather than testing them in lab situations.

What the results showed was that in today’s world, most kids found that playing video games was a very social activity, which helped them bond with others and maintain friendship bonds with others.

There was a slight correlation, however, between kids who liked to play “mature-rated games” and aggressive behaviour manifestations, but the researchers were rather quick to point out that it was unclear whether this meant that violent games made kids aggressive, or whether aggressive kids just preferred to play fight games.

The study did point out, however, that amongst girls who chose to play Mature rated games, about 40 per cent had been involved in some sort of physical fight within the last year, compared to only 14 per cent of non mature rated female game players.

The boffins noted that they were surprised to discover how popular the M-Rated games actually were among girls, citing the surprising fact that Grand Theft Auto was the second most popular video game for girls after the rather more typical Sims.

Still, Kutner and Olson were at pains to point out that it was the social context that should ring alarm bells for parents, rather than the game playing itself. For example, Kutner told Reuters that a girl who stays home and plays over 15 hours a week of only violent video games should probably have her parents worried, whereas “for boys (the danger sign) is not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of social competence for boys."

L’Inq Reuters