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Addendum: But isn’t videogame play bad for kids?

January 20, 2012 By Anne Leave a Comment

This is an addendum to my post yesterday, “Why kids love video games & what parents can do about it”….

There has been a lot of legislation written, news stories published, and research conducted about the effects of violent videogames on kids. New laws have consistently been rejected by the courts as unconstitutional, and the research has shown that “a very small number of kids, about 3%, exhibit signs of pathological gaming,” according to the author of a meta-analysis of 33 studies on the subject, Christopher Ferguson, writing for Time. Ferguson, a psychology professor at Texas A&M University, writes that, “even while video game sales have skyrocketed, youth violence plummeted to its lowest levels in 40 years” (he sites US government statistics here). [This contrast between facts and fears reminds me of similar ones in the past, in the areas of online “predators” and cyberbullying. See this.].

Ferguson also points to problems with the early research on violent videogames’ impact. “Most studies used outcome measures that had nothing to do with real-life aggression and failed to control carefully for other important variables, such as family violence, mental health issues or even gender in many studies,” he wrote. “This was something the U.S. Supreme Court recognized when, after considering California’s attempt to ban the sale of VVG [violent videogames] to minors in Brown v. EMA, it stated on June 27, 2011, ‘These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason.'” And current research “has not found that children who play VVG are more violent than other kids, nor harmed in any other identifiable fashion,” Ferguson adds. [For another perspective on violence in videogames, see this from media professor Henry Jenkins at the University of Southern California.]

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Filed Under: gaming, Law & Policy, Research, Risk & Safety, Social Media Tagged With: Christopher Ferguson, gaming, Henry Jenkins, video game research, violent videogames

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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