Violent video games - harmless fun after all suggests the University of York?

Violent video games – harmless fun after all suggests the University of York?

Violent video games have long been a contentious and emotive topic, striking at the heart of parental fears for their offspring and offering easy pickings for politicians seeking to explain tragic events.

Detractors argue they’re a breeding ground for aggression, corrupting the men, women and children that play them and foreshadowing real life events. Others say there’s no proven link and highlight the positive effects playing can have, like increased concentration, strategy formulation and stress relief.

Now a new wave of research is probing the accuracy of previous studies and seeks to redefine the debate. Academics at the University of York say they’ve found “no evidence” that video games make players more violent. Their experiments with more than 3,000 participants concluded games don’t “prime” players to behave in certain ways and showed increased realism doesn’t necessarily translate to greater aggression.

Personally, I see video games as a great stress/tension reliever (different games for different folks). If it were the games that were the problem we'd have 100 million violent maniacs storming around causing havoc…. my view it is latent "defects" within some individuals that could be triggered by anything. Guns don't make people kill other people, alcohol does not make people into alcoholics, etc. If that were the case, politics would be illegal!

See https://ewn.co.za/2018/08/10/violent-video-games-harmless-fun-after-all