Most children unaffected by violent games

Video games will only make children more violent if they already have a tendency towards aggression, a new Australian study has found.

A Swinburne University of Technology study of 120 children aged 11 to 15 revealed children prone to worrying, neurotic behavior and predisposed to aggression were likely to be more aggressive after playing violent video games.

But for the majority of children there was no difference in behavior, according to the research published in the Psychology, Crime and Law journal.

The study monitored the behavior of children from 10 schools in eastern and southern metropolitan Melbourne before and after playing the violent video game Quake II for 20 minutes, Swinburne’s Professor Grant Devilly said.

Prof Devilly said only children predisposed to aggression and more reactive to their environments changed their behavior after playing and of those only some showed more aggression.

The study found that children predisposed to aggression who were relaxed before playing became more aggressive afterwards while the more hyperactive children became less aggressive.

Prof Devilly said much of the research linking aggressive behavior to violent video games had been unconvincing

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