Violent Video Gaming Practice among Children

This essay discusses the effects of violent video gaming on empathy, aggression, and depression among children and youths.

Running head: VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Violent Video Gaming Practice among Children
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1VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Introduction
In recent times, with growing enhancement of the technology and the gaming practice, it
is observed that, the young children are becoming more and more addicted to such games.
Therefore, there are also such games which are quite violent in nature. Most of the people
believe that hose video games are directly affecting the children and youths are addicted to those
games. There is no doubt about the fact that those games affect the children by enhancing their
addiction towards the games ( Dunckley, 2016). In recent time, a game named ‘PUBG’, had
entered into the market in which 100 players would be evacuated to an island and they have to
kill each other to survive in the battle. This game has attracted a lot of children globally due to its
cartoonish violence and quirky features. Researcher has raised the question about the effects of
this game on the aggressive behavior, empathy and depression of the child gamer (ScienceDaily,
2017). However, various studies indicated that, there is no such direct effect of violent gaming
on the aggressive behavior, empathy and depressive nature of the children. In this essay, the
evidence of having no effect of violent video gaming on the empathy, aggression and depression
will be discussed by busing research studies.
Effect on Empathy of the gamers
Most of the people believes that, the children and youths, who are engaging in playing
violent video game, will surely develop reduced empathy that is reduced emotional feeling. It is
often said that violent media such as violent movies or video games will blunt the empathy of the
video gamers. However, in a recent study, the researchers of Germany showed the violent video
gaming practice has no such effect on the empathy of the gamer. In their study they used
functional magnetic resonance imaging (f-MRI) on the players who are playing games for a long
time and in the study it was observed that the long-time gamers showed same response to

2VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
emotionally provocative images and videos as non-gamers. This study showed that the violent
gaming has not so much effect on the video gamers.
Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2018). The
myth of blunted gamers: no evidence for desensitization in empathy for pain after a violent
video game intervention in a longitudinal fMRI study on non-gamers. Neurosignals, 26(1),
22-30.
The study of Kuhn et al. (2018) also supported the findings of the German researcher. In
their study, a Longitudal f-MRI study was designed and the study was conducted for 16 weeks.
The participants or the subject populations were selected in a random sampling method. The
subjects were assigned for playing video games GTA5 (n= 26), the control group was assigned
for playing a non-violent game (Sims 3) (n= 24) and the passive control group (n=30) had not
given any tasks. Each of the intervention group was asked to play the games for 30 minutes per
day for eight weeks. In the final result, the authors found that, there is no desensitization effect
among the violent video gamers and non-gamers. The large sample size and presence of
appropriate control group had enhanced the reliability and quality of the study. On the other
hand, the researcher had failed to identify specifically any long term effect of the gaming.
Effect on Aggression
Aggressive behavior is often associated with the risk factors of developing aggression
among the children who are addicted to the violent gaming practices. Many researchers
identified about the bad effects such as aggression of violent gaming. On the other hand there are
also various studies that uses f-MRI techniques, showed that there is no effect on the brain
activity due to the playing of video game.

3VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Pan, W., Gao, X., Shi, S., Liu, F., & Li, C. (2018). Spontaneous brain activity did not show
the effect of violent video games on aggression: a resting-state fMRI study. Frontiers in
psychology, 8, 2219.
The study of Pan et al. (2018) proved the fact that, the violent video games are unable to
create any effect on the aggression of the gamers. In this study, 52 right handed male subjects
were recruited as sample population for playing violent video games like Counter-Strike, Grand
Theft Auto, League of Legend, Warcraft, Cross Fire. They were asked to play games for 10 hour
in a week for 3 months. On the other hand, the youths, who are not playing any games, are
recruited as control group for this study. All of the subjects were fit physically and mentally as
well. Participants were scanned by using a 3.0 Tesla Siemens Trio scanner. The spontaneous
brain activity was quantified by using the amplitudes of fractional ALFF (fALFF) and low-
frequency fluctuations (ALFF) ( Dong et al., 2015). The authors found that, there was no
significant difference on the physical aggression, anger and hostility in between the control and
intervention group. However, significant difference was found on verbal aggression in between
the two groups. So, it can be said that, there is no neurophysiological changes among the violent
video gamers. The researchers used only male subjects and this can be a weakness of this study.
On the other hand, presence of non-gamer control group is the strengths of this study.
Effect on Depression
Depression is another factor that is often aggregated with the practice of violent gaming.
There are only a few studies that are focusing on the relation of depression and violent video
gaming practice among the children and adolescents. However, in many studies it is reported
that, the depression and violent video gaming practice has no relation at all.

4VIOLENT VIDEO GAMING PRACTICE AMONG CHILDREN
Tortolero, S. R., Peskin, M. F., Baumler, E. R., Cuccaro, P. M., Elliott, M. N., Davies, S.
L., ... & Schuster, M. A. (2014). Daily violent video game playing and depression in
preadolescent youth. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(9), 609-615.
The study of Tortolero et al (2014), found that the violent video gaming practices and the
depression symptoms had significant relations in terms of timing of the game and type of video
game. In this cross sectional study, the data were collected from the students and their care givers
who participated in the Wave-I of Healthy Passages. A linear regression statistics was used to
identify the association between the violent video gaming and depressive symptoms. In this
study, almost, 5147 fifth grade students were recruited as subject population. For identifying the
time differences in playing time of the video gaming, a chi-square test was performed. The
researcher found that the more number boys were playing video games for more than 2 hours per
day and on the other hand the number of girls were much less than that with a p value of < 0.001
(p<0.001). Therefore, the boys were more prone to play violent games than the girls (15.7% and
2.2%, respectively; p < 0.001). Finally it was observed that, the students who were engaged in
playing violent video games for >2 hours per day had more depressive symptoms in comparing
with those, who were engaged in low violence game for <2 hours. This association is continuous
among all the race and ethnic group. The large sample size is the strength of this study.
Conclusion
Hence it can be concluded that, the violent video gaming is directly associated with the
depressive symptoms among the adolescents and youth. On the other hand, other studies failed
to address any association between the reduced empathy and aggressive nature of the violence
video gaming practice. Therefore there are various scopes of research in finding the correlation
between the adverse effects of the violence video gaming on the aggressive nature of the gamers

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in their real life. It cannot be concluded yet that, violent video gamers are also very violent in
their personal life.

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References
Dong, M., Li, J., Shi, X., Gao, S., Fu, S., Liu, Z., ... & Tian, J. (2015). Altered baseline brain
activity in experts measured by amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF): a
resting state fMRI study using expertise model of acupuncturists. Frontiers in human
neuroscience, 9, 99.
Dunckley, L.V,. ( 2016). This is Your Child's Brain on Video Games. Psychology today.
Retrieved from : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201609/is-
your-childs-brain-video-games [ Accessed at 18th March, 2019]
Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2018). The
myth of blunted gamers: no evidence for desensitization in empathy for pain after a
violent video game intervention in a longitudinal fMRI study on non-
gamers. Neurosignals, 26(1), 22-30. doi.org/10.1159/000487217
Pan, W., Gao, X., Shi, S., Liu, F., & Li, C. (2018). Spontaneous brain activity did not show the
effect of violent video games on aggression: a resting-state fMRI study. Frontiers in
psychology, 8, 2219.Doi- 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02219
ScienceDaily. (2017). Video games can change your brain: Studies investigating how playing
video games can affect the brain have shown that they can cause changes in many brain
regions. ScienceDaily.Retrieved
from:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622103824.htm
Tortolero, S. R., Peskin, M. F., Baumler, E. R., Cuccaro, P. M., Elliott, M. N., Davies, S. L., ... &
Schuster, M. A. (2014). Daily violent video game playing and depression in

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preadolescent youth. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(9), 609-
615. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2014.0091