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Violent Video Games Do Not Make Monsters Out of Children, Argue Two Harvard Researchers
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in 'Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.'
Their claims have provoked a lot of criticism in the West. But they are insistent their methodology is sound and hence their findings valid.
The pair said they reached that conclusion after conducting a two-year study of more than 1,200 middle-school children about their attitudes towards videogames.
It was a different approach from most other studies, which had focused on laboratory experiments that attempt to use actions like ringing a loud buzzer as a measure of aggression.
"What we did that had rarely been done by other researchers was actually talk to the kids. It sounds bizarre but it hadn't been done," Kutner said.
But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51% of boys who played M-rated games the industry's equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28% of non-M-rated gamers.
The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40% of those who played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14% for non-M players. One of the most surprising things was how popular mature games were among girls. In fact, the 'Grand Theft Auto' crime action series was the second-most played game behind 'The Sims', a sort of virtual dollhouse.
They also found that playing videogames was a near-universal activity among children, and was often intensely social, nothing anti-social, please.
They found that the preteens and young teenagers they surveyed weren't interested in violent games per se. They were attracted to games because they had complex plots, interesting characters and engaging environments. It just so happens that many of the games that meet those criteria also include violence. But they did not like to play purely violent games like Postal or Manhunt because they found them boring.
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