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Cinco de Mayo is a bigger deal in the U.S. than in Mexico.

Most Americans tend to think that Cinco de Mayo is all about drinking/partying.

Cinco de Mayo is the day of a Mexican military victory over France, not Spain.

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Would it feel any different having your grandparent euthanized, as compared to your pet? Both are things that you love very much, but it's more common to have your pet put to sleep than a human family member. Would you feel remorse, or would you understand that his or her health was in denial and that you allowed for the right thing to happen?

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Should parents be taking more responsibility with what their kids play, or do you think that we've reached a point where it doesn't matter if kids playing violent games is a big deal?

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After looking at other people's responses, I can definitely say that I understand their point of view. Justified reasons were given pretty clearly. Now, as for overlooking certain things, yes there were some that treated certain groups differently. This was mainly due to the things such groups have gone through. But again, it seemed that most everyone gave out good reasons, leaving me to understand their point of view.

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I find it hard to believe that violent video games cause violent actions. I've been playing video games like; Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, etc. since I was in elementary/middle school and I've never gotten into any trouble related to it. I've never been in a fight, or even in the principles office. I'm very level headed and I don't think video games will cause me to snap and shoot up a school

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I think it is ridiculous that people always want to blame video games for their problems. I have been playing "violent" video games since I was in elementary school. I have never been in a fight and I have never gotten in trouble in school for being aggressive. People blame video games for their actions instead of taking personal responsibility for their actions. People shouldn't buy video games if they can't handle it or better yet, they need to learn how to keep their hands to themselves. When they get arrested they can't blame the video game. They should be learning self control instead of worrying about video games.

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“If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.”

-Marcus Brigstocke

I chose this quote because it exemplifies how even an older game doesn't affect the player. Even though Pac-Man is not a photo-realistic, violent game, it was very popular back then. Due to its popularity, like with the violent shooters today, one would think that the older game could cause the player to do strange things in society.

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I found a picture of a person's head with imagery of controllers and weapons surrounding the head. I chose this picture because it represents what researchers believe happens to those that play too many violent video games. They say that after playing for too many hours, the player's aggression increases. This apparently then leads to the person wanting to commit a violent crime.

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Eric Bedner wrote an article about a teenager named Matthew Rios, who is completely biased

towards violent video games, negatively. Rios believes that violent games "have a direct effect on

violence in society."

Who - Matthew Rios, 15-years-old

What - Rios draws a painting with a controller and message on it.

When - December 18th, 2014

Where - East Windsor

Why - Rios wants to show people how violent games have a bad effect on people.

Even though I do not agree with Matthew's statement, I can understand and respect how he

is just trying to make the world a better place. However, one thing he says actually throws me

off a little bit. At one point in the article, he mentions that, "When kids see violent things on TV and video games, they often mimic it in the real world." To me, it's hard to tell whether Rios means that kids try to copy stuff in games and on TV, or if they actually attempt to perform such violent acts in society.

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EAST WINDSOR - After doing research for a school project, an avid gamer has changed his tune - and now believes violent video games have a direct effect on violence in society.

Matthew Rios, 15, chose to focus on the issue as his "capstone" project for his 10th-grade class at the Metropolitan Learning Center in Bloomfield.

"I created this painting to inform the public about video game violence and the effect that it has on kids," Rios said.

For the project, Rios combined his interest in video games with his passion for creativity. He said he often spends his free time drawing, and that he started with a rough sketch before using oil pastels on his painting.

The painting depicts a video game controller with blood splattered across it, to represent the gore and violence in games.

The words "Game Over" are painted at the top to express that violence in games is unnecessary and can be stopped, Rios said.

While reading articles and scientific research, Rios said he learned that violent games affect certain parts of the brain, triggering emotional and aggressive behavior in young people.

"Most of the video games that are created today are often violent," Rios said. "Although kids might think these types of games are just fun, they are secretly doing more harm than good," Rios said.

Rios said that he hopes his painting will make people more aware of how violent games affect their users.

"It is not a necessity to have these games," Rios said. "They often have a negative effect. I do feel a really strong concern about this."

Rios admits that he does still play violent games from time to time, but not nearly as much as he used to.

Now, he includes games that have no violence at all. Some of those include ones that focus on construction, such as Sims and Minecraft, which may help him reach his goal of working in architecture or design.

One example that supports his view of how much influence games have on young minds is the fact that he started playing basketball, something he didn't do prior to playing a basketball video game.

His mother is pleased about that.

"To me, that's encouraging that he's reaching out to more of the sports-type games," Ivette Rios said. "It's good that he's starting to focus more on different types of games."

Rios believes the effect that violence has on young people extends to other mediums as well.

"When kids see violent things on TV and video games, they often mimic it in the real world," Rios said.

Rios said games in general could have a negative impact on a child's development, especially concerning schoolwork.

Rios' parents have limited the amount of time he is allowed to play video games. He would routinely play for seven or eight hours in one sitting, but has since been cut back to a few hours on the weekends, and none during the week.

His father, William Rios, said that has had a positive effect on a number of aspects of Matthew Rios' life.

"You can actually see the effect on him," William Rios said. "Not only on himself, but also his schoolwork."

Rios agreed that limiting his time spent playing has had a positive effect.

"I had seen that my grades were not as they could be," he said. "I decided to put that aside and focus on my schoolwork."

While Rios' father believes people can experience violence firsthand without becoming violent, his concern is that some people do lose sight of reality.

He cited the gun debate, saying that guns aren't the problem; guns in the wrong hands are.

A gamer himself, William Rios was surprised to see the amount of violence in some modern games.

"I didn't know to the extent of what those games actually went to until we got them here and we saw them," he said. "Certain parts of it really were shocking."

Rather than focusing on the potentially harmful impact of violent games, though, William Rios sees it a way of opening a dialogue with his son, giving him an opportunity to discuss the issue.

"It's a teaching tool," he said.

William Rios said that what concerns him about his son playing violent games is when he plays in groups online, saying that the competition plays a part in encouraging aggressive behavior.

William Rios enjoys war games, and uses the common interest to spend more time with his sons, often playing with Matthew and Matthew's older brother, William Jr., on a Saturday afternoon.

However, William Rios is concerned about the realistic graphics in modern video games.

"I think that's where they're starting to blur the make believe with reality," he said.

Ivette Rios admits that she wasn't aware that video games have a rating system similar to that of movies. She would buy the games that she heard were popular from other parents and children without checking the rating.

Now, however, since her son has been discussing his research at home, she is paying more attention to the ratings, she said.

Matthew Rios is working with his teachers to have his poster displayed at his school so his classmates can view it and consider their own video gaming habits.

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Teen's message to peers in painting: Violent video games are harmful

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EAST WINDSOR - After doing research for a school project, an avid gamer has changed his tune - and now believes violent video games have a direct effect on violence in society. Matthew Rios, 15, chose to focus on the issue as his "capstone" project for his 10th-grade class at the Metropolitan Learning Center in Bloomfield.

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So this article, by Tom Jacobs, goes over how Italian researchers conduct a study that

involves 172 high school students each playing a violent game for 35 minutes and a

non-violent game for 35 minutes.

Who - Researchers and high school students

What - Researchers conducting a study involving violent games

When - February 10th, 2014

Where - Italy

Why - The Italian researchers want to prove a point on how violent video games

increase a player's aggression.

One thing that stands out to me from this article is the number of steps the participants must follow during the study. I feel like at least one or two of the 172

teens must find the process too convoluted, due to performing so many tasks.

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Still convinced that violent video games are harmless fun? You might want to put down that console and consider the findings of two new research papers.

The first, a meta-analysis of 98 studies with nearly 37,000 participants, concludes without equivocation that "violent video games increase aggression."

The second, which describes new research from Italy, provides further evidence of that troubling dynamic, and indicates they also lead to "decreased self-control and increased cheating."

"Many real-world decisions require self-regulation of moral behavior," writes a research team led by psychologist Alessandro Gabbiadini. "Our study indicates that playing violent video games can interfere with this ability."

"Participants who played a violent video game for only 35 minutes exhibited less self-control, cheated more, and behaved more aggressively than did participants who played a nonviolent video game."

The Italian study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, featured 172 high school students. After 10 minutes of practice, each played a violent video game ( Grand Theft Auto III or Grand Theft Auto San Andreas) or a non-violent one ( Pinball 3D or Mini Golf 3D) for 35 minutes.

Participants were told they could snack from a bowl of M&Ms placed next to the computer as they played. However, they were also warned that eating too much candy too quickly was unhealthy. Their level of self-control was measured by noting how much of the chocolate they consumed.

After finishing play, they completed a survey designed to measure their level of moral disengagement. On a one-to-seven scale ("completely agree" to "completely disagree"), participants responded to a series of statements indicating a tendency to think of moral behavior in relative terms.

Examples include "Compared to the illegal things people do, taking some things from a store without paying for them is not very serious" and "It is OK to insult a classmate, because beating him/her is worse."

The experiment concluded with two tests designed to measure aggression and the tendency to cheat.

Participants were told they could earn one raffle ticket for each problem they solved on a 10-item logic test. They scored their own responses and took a lottery ticket from an envelope for each correct answer. Researchers measured cheating by comparing the number of tickets taken with the actual number of correct answers.

In addition, participants took part in a "competitive reaction time task" in which the winner of each round "could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones." Researchers measured aggression by how loud and long participants blasted the unpleasant sound.

The results were consistent across the board: "Participants who played a violent video game for only 35 minutes exhibited less self-control, cheated more, and behaved more aggressively than did participants who played a nonviolent video game."

Specifically, those who played the violent game ate more M&Ms, took more unearned raffle tickets, and gave their rivals a longer and louder blast of noise.

"Although very few teenagers were unaffected by violent video games," Gabbiadini and his colleagues write, "individuals high in moral disengagement were far more affected than those low in moral disengagement." This suggests a subset of players-those prone to find ways to justify their unethical behavior-are particularly susceptible to the effects of these games.

Given this new evidence, "it seems more appropriate to assess the consequences of violent video games on behavior in terms of a gradient of intensity of the effects, rather than just the presence/absence of such consequences," they conclude.

That last point provides interesting context for the meta-study, which was conducted by researchers Tobias Greitemeyer and Dirk Mügge and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. It finds "strong evidence that violent video games do affect aggressive outcomes."

Aggressive behavior is multi-determined, with violent video game exposure being one source among many others (and some of them having a stronger influence than do violent video games).

On the other hand, even small effects-and the effect of violent video games is small to medium in its effect size-can have a negative impact on a societal level when many people are exposed to it, which certainly applies to violent video games.

Thus, in our view, violent video game play should be regarded as a risk factor for aggressive behavior.

The Italian researchers both expand on that notion-they find it's actually a risk factor for several types of negative behavior-and narrow it somewhat, suggesting certain players are more susceptible to such effects than others. These findings, which need to be replicated, potentially add important nuance to the debate.

But they don't change the fundamental equation: Violent video games can, and do, impact players' attitudes and behaviors. And not for the better.

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Violent Video Games and Bad Behavior: The Evidence Mounts

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Still convinced that violent video games are harmless fun? You might want to put down that console and consider the findings of two new research papers. The first, a meta-analysis of 98 studies with nearly 37,000 participants, concludes without equivocation that "violent video games increase aggression."

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http://videogames.procon.org/

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Emma Zambrycki stays on the positive side of the subject matter, by talking

about how researcher John Velez is certain that violent video games do not

'evoke violence in players.'

Who - John Velez

What - Researcher says violent games don't trigger real-life violence.

When - October 9th, 2014

Where - America

Why - Parents are getting more worried about the growing number of

violent games today.

I honestly think parents have the right to be worried. Violent games are a common thing now.

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More than half of American households play video and computer games, a subject that John Velez, professor of communication at Texas Tech, focuses his research on.

According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board's website, an organization that rates video games based on their content and appropriateness for children, many parents worry that today's video games are far too violent for children and can cause unnecessary violence and frustration in players.

Violent video games do not necessarily evoke violence in players, Velez said. Violent video games only cause players to become less polite, or more irritable, but only occasionally.

While there are some negative effects of playing violent video games, Velez said it seems irrational to link heinous violent crimes committed by young people to video games.

"There's so many other factors that go into it, like your personality, your history, any history of abuse, and mental illness, things of that nature. So many factors go into how you behave in terms of aggressive or violent behaviors," he said. "Violent video games may be a predictor, but to say that violent video games are the cause of those things, and they're the only reason why, is incorrect."

Josh Vindi, a chemical engineering major from Houston, said he plays what some may define as violent video games and also plays with other online players. He feels playing violent video games does not make him feel particularly aggressive, he said, or angry.

While some may say mature video and computer games can act as a stress reliever, Vindi said in his case, he only uses video games as a source of entertainment and stress release. He also enjoys the connections he makes while playing with other players around the world.

"I feel like the way they handle rated M games is already pretty good," he said. "I mean you have to have an ID, you have to be 17 years old and actually show ID to buy a rated M game, and I feel like it's really similar to the way they treated music in the 80's. I feel like it's just another thing to get worried about really."

More boys than girls play video games, especially those that feature online game play and mature content, according to the website.

However, in terms of negative affects, Velez said girls are not affected differently than boys.

Both girls and boys feel the same effects, but generally, he said, males are more violent than females, regardless of video games usage.

Velez said he believes that in the future, as the gamer generation gets older, people will be more accepting of mature video games and more willing to discuss the issue.

"I think there will always be people out there who are trying to take advantage of the violent video game debate in that way," Velez said, "but I do think as the younger generation who grew up with video games gets older, that there will be a much more open dialogue and more acceptance of violent video games."

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Violent video games do not create aggressive behavior

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More than half of American households play video and computer games, a subject that John Velez, professor of communication at Texas Tech, focuses his research on. According to the Entertainment Software Rating Board's website, an organization that rates video games based on their content and appropriateness for children, many parents worry that today's video games are far too violent for children and can cause unnecessary violence and frustration in players.

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Rachel Barclay gives the reader a good load of information relating to violent video games and how researchers are still in debate with this controversial subject.

Who - Kids

What - "...are video games making kids violent?"

When - August 28, 2014

Where - America

Why - Researchers are studying almost non-stop on whether

kids can perform violent actions from playing violent

video games.

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On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including 20 children, before committing suicide.

In their struggle to understand why this tragedy occurred, public figures drew attention to the fact that Lanza was an avid video game player. He played video games that glorify violence like "Grand Theft Auto" and "Call of Duty." From there, pundits asked the larger question: are video games making kids violent?

A Daily Dose of Violence

More than 90 percent of American kids play video games. The number might be as high as 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls. It's not just kids playing, either - according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 58 percent of all Americans play video games, and nearly half of Americans over 50 play. The organization also found that 45 percent of gamers are women and that the average gamer is 30 years old.

Gameplay is also on the rise - one study shows that average daily video game play among kids ages 8 to 18 rose from 26 minutes per day in 1999 to almost 110 minutes (nearly two hours) per day by 2009. The numbers are even higher for boys, 25 percent of whom play video games for four or more hours per day.

And playing video games means playing violent games, it seems. More than 90 percent of games rated E10+, Teen, or Mature have some kind of violent imagery, and "that violence is often portrayed as justified, fun, and without negative consequences," write researchers Douglas Gentile and Craig Anderson, of Iowa State University.

Even E-rated video games, which the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) says are suitable for all ages and "may contain minimal ... violence," are suspect. One study found that 35 of 55 E-rated games involved deliberate violence, and 33 reward violence or require violence to advance in the game. That study also found that of 32 games that did not have a content description for violence, 14 games contained violence anyway.
Get the Facts: What Is Aggressive Behavior? "
Video Games, Aggression, and Risky Behavior

In the short term, it's fairly easy to measure the effects of violent video games: set a group of people down, have them play a violent or nonviolent game, then measure the results. A slew of studies have found that in comparison to nonviolent or prosocial video games, violent games promote feelings of hostility and aggression, desensitize the player to violence, and skew the player's perception of what constitutes violence.

Do these effects last long-term? To find out, scientists ran longitudinal studies, tracking how children's video game use changed over time, and with it, measures of aggression. One study tracked more than 3,000 kids for three years and found that playing violent video games increased their impulsiveness. In a vicious cycle, higher base levels of impulsiveness increased their video game use. A second study on the same set of kids also found increases in aggression.

"We know that violence in general ... is associated with mental health problems. We also know, given brain research, that our brain sometimes doesn't distinguish between what's real and what we see on TV." - Susan Tortolero, University of Texas

Another study published this year tracked 5,000 teenagers for four years and found that playing Mature-rated video games predicted later risky behaviors.

"Play of these Mature-rated, risk glorifying games was associated with subsequent increases in sensation seeking, rebelliousness, hanging out with kids who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol, thinking kids who drink and smoke are cool, and thinking that one would like to try drinking and smoking," explained Jay Hull, department chair of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College, in an interview with Healthline. "In turn, changes in these variables were associated with subsequent changes in drinking, smoking, fighting, risky sex, and delinquent behavior."

The effects were much stronger among kids who played violent games with an antisocial protagonist (i.e. "Grand Theft Auto III," "Manhunt") than with a heroic protagonist (i.e. "Spider-Man 2").

Another study by Susan Tortolero, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research at the University of Texas, examined the link between violent video game play and depression.

"We know that violence in general - whether it's being a victim of violence, or just witnessing violence - is associated with mental health problems," she told Healthline. "We also know, given brain research, that our brain sometimes doesn't distinguish between what's real and what we see on TV."

She found that playing more than two hours a day of violent video games is linked much more strongly with depression than playing less than two hours a day of nonviolent video games.

However, other studies didn't find any such negative effect, or they found that the effect goes in the opposite direction. followed 324 elementary school children for a year. It found that children who were aggressive at the beginning of the study were more likely to have grown to prefer bloody or brutal video games by the end of the study, suggesting that innate aggression can lead to violent video game use. Violent video game playing, on the other hand, didn't predict later aggression. followed 302 kids for one year and found no connection between video game violence and aggression, violent crime, or bullying behaviors. Another study

Criminologist Ray Surette of the University of Central Florida researched the video-game-playing habits of 249 inmates in a county jail. He found that video game playing did not predict who had committed copycat crimes. However, he did find that the degree of immersion in media (regardless of type) did predict copycat crime.
Check Out the 18 Best Depression Apps of 2014 "
The Positive Effects of Video Games

Most video games don't match the degree of violence in titles like "Grand Theft Auto." In fact, many promote prosocial behaviors, such as cooperation, teamwork, sharing, and empathy. One analysis found that playing first-person shooter games increases visual-spatial skills and that playing strategy or role-playing games boosts creative problem-solving skills. It also showed that games can improve mood, promote relaxation, and decrease stress and anxiety.

Another study found that role-playing games allow people to "try on" different personalities, offering a range of freedom of identity never seen before in the pre-gaming era. Meanwhile, activity-based games like "Dance Dance Revolution" help promote physical activity and exercise. Education- and health-oriented video games also have their place. For example, one game called "Re-Mission" successfully teaches child cancer patients to adhere to their treatment regimen.

Do any of these skills translate into real-world success? Experts have mixed views.

"The heart of the issue is that commercial pilots, those we train now to become [drone pilots], have a set of skills that are location- and environment-specific," said Richard Van Eck, a professor of instructional design and technology at the University of North Dakota, in an interview with Healthline. "They look out the windows, hear the plane, feel present in the plane as it moves. Piloting a [drone] is nothing like that; the primary interface is 2D screens. So it turns out that video games may provide better training for some of those skills than actual flight training does."

However, video games also teach skills that are undesirable in drone pilots, such as the tendency to shoot at anything that moves. "If gaming can instill the habit patterns needed to fly a [drone], then it seems to me that the efforts are beneficial," said John Bridewell, a professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota, in an interview with Healthline. "If there is a negative transfer of learning, then it is not so good. Habit patterns are very difficult to break. Even when one is able to break a habit pattern, in an emergency, people typically resort to the actions first learned."

Major Uriah Orland of the United States Air Force concludes, "What is harder to capture in current simulators are the roles of pilots, which is much more than just hand-eye coordination. They are a mission commander for a complicated combat weapon system, often requiring the coordination of other platforms and crews. The pilots are coordinating with an operational chain to determine the appropriate employment of munitions and are following the appropriate rules of engagement while making the final decisions on releasing munitions. This leadership, coordination, and responsibility is something that video games cannot begin to replicate."

So What's the Verdict?

To examine the wealth of data on the psychological effects of video games, Anderson, director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State, and Christopher Ferguson, of Stetson University, have performed meta-analyses. These studies combine data from a large number of papers to tease out general trends.

According to Anderson's findings, video games boost the body's fight-or-flight response, increase aggressive thoughts and feelings, and decrease prosocial and empathetic behavior. Ferguson, on the other hand, found that the evidence was ambiguous, and attributed the wealth of data on aggression to publication bias, in which studies that find an effect of some kind are more likely to be published than studies that find no effect.

There's a chicken-and-egg question here - do violent video games cause aggression, or do kids who are predisposed to aggression later in life also play more violent video games? Anderson espouses the General Aggression Model, which states that the short-term aggression triggered by video game play generalizes into other areas of life. Ferguson's theory is the opposite: he champions the Catalyst Model, in which video game use activates pre-existing tendencies toward aggression caused by biology, personality, and peer and family environment.

Hull worries about this latter model, which he dubs the "bad seed" hypothesis. "This proposes that some kids are just born bad and this 'badness' first shows up as attraction to playing games of the type we examined," he said. "The bad seed hypothesis has to say that not only does the seed grow toward these bad behaviors, but it does so in exactly the way we document. It has to dismiss any lab studies that do find a causal effect of playing these games on behavior (e.g., evidence of increased aggression, stealing, cheating in the lab - all of which have been documented), as trivial and temporary."

There are, however, other reasons why video games might be linked to aggression. Andrew Przybylski, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, found that it wasn't violence in video games that predicted aggression but rather how frustrating or challenging a game was to complete. Other research of his also found that "games featuring violent stories and content tend to be more appealing for those who are higher in trait-level aggression," he told Healthline.

Przybylski also noted that while virtually all children play video games, most don't get into trouble. A recent study of his found that kids who played video games for less than an hour a day had higher life satisfaction and better social functioning than kids who didn't play video games at all. Kids who played one to three hours of games a day didn't see any changes, and kids who played three or more hours a day turned out worse. This suggests that video games are indeed normal for kids, and that the factors that cause kids not to play games may be linked to other problems. The size of the effect, however, was very small, he said.

Why Is It So Hard to Get a Clear Answer?

Although plenty of studies have linked violent video game play to aggression, the real question - whether violent video games cause real-world violence - is still up in the air.

For starters, the effect size of video games on children's thoughts and behaviors is very, very small - less than half of 1 percent, Ferguson told Healthline. Anderson says this doesn't mean that the effect is insignificant. Instead, video game violence exposure is one of a great many risk factors for real-world violence.

"No one risk factor can be said to be 'the' cause," Anderson told Healthline. "Risk factors accumulate, as do protective factors. This is true for extreme acts of violence (school shootings) as well as less extreme acts. Media violence is not the largest risk factor for later aggressive or violent behavior, but it also isn't the smallest. It is the one risk factor that can be greatly influenced by parents or caregivers without great expense."

Meanwhile, Ferguson found that innate aggression, family violence, and male gender were all linked to real-world violence, but not violent video game play. He finds the idea that game violence might promote real violence " ridiculous." He points out that Adam Lanza's favorite game was "Dance Dance Revolution," which is decidedly nonviolent, and that the Virginia Tech shooter didn't play violent video games at all.

"In the end, whether violent or non-violent, [video games] are merely fun, thoughtful, new forms of 'art' that don't really have any more impact than books, music, or other forms of art." - Christopher Ferguson, Stetson University

James Fox and Monica DeLateur, criminologists at Northeastern University, point out that mass shootings are not on the rise, and that there is no connection between violent video game play and mass shootings. Researchers Patrick Markey and Juliana French, of Villanova University, and Charlotte Markey, of Rutgers University, found that while video game sales are at an all-time high, violent crime is at an all-time low, with noticeable dips in crime after the release of games like "Grand Theft Auto."

"The reality is that we have probably both exaggerated the negative and positive impact of video games on children," Ferguson said. "This is typical of the 'moral panic' that follows the introduction of new media into society, which can cause even scholars, at least in the short term, to [make] exaggerated claims. I think all of us can remember media-based moral panics from our own childhoods ... from rock music ... to comic books in the 1950s, to Harry Potter, to rap music, to Dungeons and Dragons, etc. In the end, whether violent or non-violent, they are merely fun, thoughtful, new forms of 'art' that don't really have any more impact than books, music or other forms of art."

Who should we believe? Przybylski found that people who did not grow up with video games and who lack video game experience are most likely to believe that violent video games cause real-world violence. Meanwhile, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University, noted that most Americans get their information on video games from the mass media, and that mass media has increasingly denied the effects of video games on violence over time.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association that restrictions on selling Mature-rated video games to minors violated free speech, on the basis that "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively. Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media."

One area of agreement is that parents can, and should, get involved. "It might not be accurate to think just of controlling a child's gaming time as a way to encourage healthy regulation of play," Przybylski said.

Ferguson added, "I would also suggest to parents to be involved in their children's media lives. Simply banning everything objectionable I don't think will work, but play games with your kids. The best thing for parents to look for is whether the child is seriously neglecting other responsibilities, skipping school, etc. Even heavy playing isn't a psychological problem if the child is able to get their other responsibilities in line. Every parent has the right to decide what works best for their family."
Read More: What is Video Game and Technology Addiction? "

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Do Video Games Make Kids Saints or Psychopaths (and Why Is It So Hard to Find Out)?

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On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including 20 children, before committing suicide. In their struggle to understand why this tragedy occurred, public figures drew attention to the fact that Lanza was an avid video game player.

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Here are the Ws to this background info:

Who - Players of video games, advocates, detractors.

What - Positive and negative characteristics/effects of

video games being the subject of scientific study.

When - Early 1980s-present day

Where - Countries where video games are being played.

Why - Controversial events have been occurring over the past several years, relating to violence at schools and other places.

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Video game controversies are societal and scientific arguments about whether the content of video games change the behavior and attitudes of a player, and whether this is reflected in video game culture overall. Since the early 2000s, advocates of video games have emphasized their use as an expressive medium, arguing for their protection under the laws governing freedom of speech and also as an educational tool.