Video games – do they really make people violent?

[24 January 2012 - 17h22]

According to an American study, playing violent video games regularly can affect the area of the brain associated with emotional control. Playing certain realistic and violent shooting games on a regular basis appears to have a direct effect on players’ frontal cortex – This is the area responsible for controlling emotion and aggression.

A number of healthy young men aged 18 to 29 were selected for the study. The first group was asked to play a shooting video game for 10 hours spread out over 8 days. The following week they were asked to refrain from touching their games console completely. The members of the second group were asked not to play any video games at all for 15 days. All those taking part in the study underwent MRI examinations before and after the test. They also answered psychological tests designed to assess their emotions. After a week, the men in the first group showed reduced activity in the lower left frontal lobe. According to the researchers, “these results indicate that violent video games have a long-term effect on players’ brain function”.

But does this mean that playing video games actually makes people violent? There is fierce debate raging about this on the other side of the Atlantic between those who want to see the banning of violent video games for younger people … and their promoters. In 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled against a law passed in California banning the sale of violent video games to the under-18s. Though Americans have been directly affected by killings perpetrated by adolescents, such as the Colombine massacre of 1999, the economic argument still seems to hold sway. The entertainment market is a highly lucrative one … as, of course, is the weapons market.

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