Violence ... playing games is a normal and intensely social experience, especially for boys, say psychologists / IGN

Boys who don't play videogames 'are at risk'

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter May 09, 2008 12:15pm

Harvard psychologists debunk myths about violent games
Boys who don't play any games at all are 'at increased risk'
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BOYS who don't play videogames at all are at greater risk of getting into trouble than those who play violent games occasionally, according to two Harvard psychologists.

The pair also said there was also no evidence to suggest violent games turn young people into criminals or violent people, despite some media reports.

"If you look at the violent crime in the US over the past 20 years among teenagers it's gone down, and gone down significantly, and if you look at videogame play, it's gone up," said Dr Lawrence Kutner and Dr Cheryl Olsen of Harvard Medical School in a recent interview.

"The big concern that you hear the politicians and the pundits argue, that playing violent videogames will somehow turn your child into a criminal or a violent person, there's absolutely no evidence for that."

Dr Kutner and Dr Olson conducted a two-year study of 1250 children and 500 parents, funded by the US Department of Justice, to uncover links between games and children's behaviour.

The pair found that while there was no direct link between games and violence, there was a correlation between adult-rated games and aggressive behaviour.

Half of the boys who played adult-rated games had been in a fight in the past 12 months, compared to 28 per cent of boys who played games with a less mature rating.

Among girls, 40 per cent who played adult-rated games had been in a fight recently compared to only 12 per cent of those who didn't.

However Dr Kutner and Dr Olsen said it was unclear if adult-rated games triggered aggressive behaviour, or if aggressive children were drawn to playing them.

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'Risk markers'

Dr Kutner and Dr Olsen said while it was normal for children to play games, there were certain "risk markers" that parents should watch out for that may indicate an increased chance of getting into trouble.

"If you have, for example, a girl who plays 15 hours a week of exclusively violent videogames, I'd be very concerned because it's very unusual," Dr Kutner said.

"But for boys (the danger sign) is not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, videogames are a measure of social competence for boys."

In an interview with G4 TV's X-Play program, Dr Kutner said Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho had not played any games at college, according to his roommates.

"That struck them as really odd, because everyone else did," he said.

"That fell right into line with our research findings, that the kids who don't play (games) at all are actually at greater risk of getting into trouble."

Airhorns and lab experiments

Dr Kutner and Dr Olsen dismissed previous studies by "experimental psychologists" that attempted to measure links between games and aggression by using electric shocks and loud noises in laboratories.

"There seems to be a core of experimental psychologists who’ve really grabbed the headlines on this topic," Dr Olsen told X-Play.

"They tend to take college students in Psych 101 and they pay them a little bit or give them some course credit and they have them play a violent or a non-violent game for fifteen or twenty minutes.

"Then they have them do something like blast an airhorn or give a little shock to someone they can't see in another room.

"They try to say aggression in the real world is the same as aggression in the lab, where they're blasting an airhorn for a fraction of a second longer."

Dr Kutner and Dr Olson, who are married, are co-founders and directors of the Centre for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The results of their research into games and children's mental health were published last month in a book titled Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games.