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Playing violent video games is no more likely to be damaging to young children's behaviour than those considered harmless, an Oxford University study suggests.

Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behaviour or school performance - and even then only slightly so.

But it concluded that fears that a generation of young people are growing up with their development impaired by exposure to violent video games are no more likely to be borne out than previous "moral panics" over television and other media.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media...

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Study finds no evidence violent video games make children aggressive

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Playing violent video games is no more likely to be damaging to young children's behaviour than those considered harmless, an Oxford University study suggests. Research involving British primary schoolchildren found that the length of time young people spend playing games, rather than their content, could have an effect on their behaviour or school performance - and even then only slightly so.

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Over at Vice's Motherboard gaming website, writer Teodora Stoica is just the latest to trot out a bunch of nonsense about video games and violence without bothering to even question broad, sweeping assumptions.

It's baffling that video game websites keep publishing such one-sided malarkey, but as people like to say these days, "It's 2016."

Apparently "It's 2016" justifies a whole lot of mumbo jumbo.

"In 2016, technology and media have turned genocide viral," writes Stoica, failing to point out that genocide is actually a real thing that has never been caused by video games. "The video game Mortal Kombat X features spines being snapped, heads crushed and players being diced into cubes. In Hatred, gamers play as a sociopath who attempts to kill innocent bystanders and police officers with guns, flamethrowers and bombs to satisfy his hatred of humanity. Characters beg for mercy before execution, frequently during profanity-laced rants."

I always knew the game Hatred, which basically nobody played, would be used more to condemn video games than anything else, an unwitting pawn in agenda-driven articles like this one. It's one reason the game has always irritated me to no end.

Stoica's argument, which delves into only one side of the never-ending debate on video games and violence, boils down to this:

Since the Korean War, the military has altered basic training to help soldiers overcome existing norms of violence, desensitise them to the acts they might have to commit, and reflexively shoot upon cue. Even the drill sergeant is portrayed as the consummate professional personifying violence and aggression.

The same training takes place unconsciously through contemporary video games and media. Young children have unprecedented access to violent movies, games and sports events at an early age, and learning brutality is the norm. The media dwells upon real-life killers, describing every detail of their crime during prime-time TV. The current conditions easily set up children to begin thinking like soldiers and even justify killing. But are we in fact suppressing critical functions of the brain? Are we engendering future generations who will accept violence and ignore the voice of reason, creating a world where violence will become the comfortable norm?

No, dear god, no. The answer is no. It has always been and always will be "No."

Real violence and video game violence are not the same thing. The vast majority of people who play video games do not commit violent crimes or engage in violent acts. If they did, the 70 million copies of GTAV that have been sold globally would have thrust the world into chaos. Gamers' empathy remains as intact as anyone else's, which is to say there are bad apples in every bunch. I played Mortal Kombat as a child (yes, it was available in the early 90s' not just in 2016) and never once had the urge to snap spines in half.

Anyone who has actually engaged in real violence---a fight at school, for instance---will know just how vastly different it is from the violence we experience on a screen. Real violence is frightening and overwhelming and takes control of your entire body.

I was in a fight in fifth grade, and never again since, thank god. Three boys chased me into my friend's house after I tossed a bucket of water on them. They punched and kicked me. I wasn't really hurt, but it was scary. I literally cannot imagine taking another human life, and neither can most people. This is common sense. It doesn't matter how many digital avatars you've slaughtered in video games. So long as you're not a sociopath, which video games cannot create, you aren't going to have an easy time killing. Even soldiers, in war, struggle with the act.

The real makers of war and chaos are the politicians we elect, the policies we enact that promote violence like the War on Drugs. It's the religious fanatics and the hawks and the cowards who get other people to carry out their violence for them.

In any case, I've written extensively about the science behind all of this. I don't have the time or inclination to do it all over again. The truth of the matter is, for every study you show me about how video games can make people more "numb" to violence or more aggressive, I can show you one that says the opposite. I prefer to use basic reason and common sense. Show me your studies, I'll show you the world around us.

Every few months or so, somebody comes out with some fear-mongering jibber-jabber about how video games are corrupting our youth, making our young men terrible killing machines. They always ignore the fact that in nations with high rates of video game usage, violent crime is generally exceptionally low; that as video games have become more popular and realistic, violent crime has fallen; that in spite of the horrific shootings we keep seeing, these are never caused by video games, and have their roots in far more complex and difficult to understand phenomena.

So why do we keep seeing this propaganda? Why do we see it from both right-wingers and left-wingers alike these days? Why do liberal video game writers and conservative activists like Jack Thompson all ride the same bandwagon?

Because people have agendas. Because people are arrogant and self-assured. (Oh no, I know a dirty word!)

Because it's fun to get clicks and fun to stir up fear and fun to sit on a moral high horse and wag your finger at people who enjoy such crude things as first-person shooters or D&D. Surely these people are closeted killers, nerdy deviants just one thumbstick away from a massacre.

Hogwash. You have no proof. You have "studies" and accusations. You'll need to do better than that. And shame on gaming websites that promote this nonsense without at the very least presenting the other side.

/End Rant/

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No, For The Millionth Time, Video Games Don't Cause Real World Violence

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Over at Vice's Motherboard gaming website, writer Teodora Stoica is just the latest to trot out a bunch of nonsense about video games and violence without bothering to even question broad, sweeping assumptions. It's baffling that video game websites keep publishing such one-sided malarkey, but as people like to say these days, "It's 2016."

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Video Games Don't Cause Violent Behavior