That way you can catch any inappropriate content in the games he plays, and he'll be in a position to interact with others. Also pay attention to time spent playing games on smartphones and tablets. Make sure your son has other appealing choices: sports, activities, chances to socialize with friends, and downtime to be creative. If you still have concerns about his video game activity, talk with your doctor. Reviewed by: KidsHealth Medical Experts. Violent video games have long been hypothesized to increase violent behavior, yet no real evidence has been found to show that they actually do.
Teasing out violent video game exposure as a cause of actual violence is tough given that TV shows, movies, social media and the local news all celebrate violent acts daily. Celebrate might sound like the wrong word, however, a study of digital media found that the average American will witness , acts of violence on TV by the age of So, sussing out the effects of video games on a youth already desensitized to violent acts by other mainstream media would be close to impossible.
Given that most of us are not violent, do video games have other mental health effects? It has only been in the last decade in which considerable research has been done on the benefits of gaming. Multiple studies have found players use video games to relax and reduce stress. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry AACAP represents over 9, child and adolescent psychiatrists who are physicians with at least five years of additional training beyond medical school in general adult and child and adolescent psychiatry.
Hard copies of Facts sheets may be reproduced for personal or educational use without written permission, but cannot be included in material presented for sale or profit. Facts sheets may not be reproduced, duplicated or posted on any other website without written consent from AACAP.
Video Games and Children: Playing with Violence. Return to Table of Contents. If you need immediate assistance, please dial Some researchers supported Anderson et al. However, Markey held a neutral position that extreme views should not be taken in the relationship between violent video games and aggression. In fact, the relation of violent video games to aggression is complicated. Besides the controversy between the above two models about whether there is an influence, other studies explored the role of internal factors such as normative belief about aggression and external factors such as family environment in the relationship between violent video games and aggression.
Normative beliefs about aggression are one of the most important cognitive factors influencing adolescent aggression; they refer to an assessment of aggression acceptability by an individual Huesmann and Guerra, They can be divided into two types: general beliefs and retaliatory beliefs.
The former means a general view about aggression, while the latter reflects aggressive beliefs in provocative situations. Normative beliefs about aggression reflect the degree acceptance of aggression, which affects the choice of aggressive behavior. Studies found that normative beliefs about aggression are directly related to aggression. First, self-reported aggression is significantly correlated to normative beliefs about aggression Bailey and Ostrov, ; Li et al.
There is a longitudinal temporal association of normative beliefs about aggression with aggression Krahe and Busching, Normative beliefs about aggression are significantly positively related to online aggressive behavior Wright and Li, , which is the most important determining factor of adolescent cyberbullying Kowalski et al. Teenagers with high normative beliefs about aggression are more likely to become bullies and victims of traditional bullying and cyberbullying Burton et al.
Finally, normative beliefs about aggression can significantly predict the support and reinforcement of bystanders in offline bullying and cyberbullying Machackova and Pfetsch, In this situation, not only can they imitate the aggressive behavior of the model but also their understanding and acceptability about aggression may change.
Therefore, normative beliefs about aggression can also be a mediator between violent video games and adolescent aggression Duan et al. Studies have shown that the mediating role of normative beliefs about aggression is not influenced by factors such as gender, prior aggression, and parental monitoring Gentile et al.
Family violence, parenting style, and other family factors have major effects on adolescent aggression. Many studies have found that family violence and other negative factors are positively related to adolescent aggression Ferguson et al. On the other hand, family environment can act on adolescent aggression together with other factors, such as exposure to violent video games. Analysis of the interaction between family conflict and media violence including violence on TV and in video games to adolescent aggression showed that teenagers living in higher conflict families with more media violence exposure show more aggressive behavior Fikkers et al.
Parental monitoring is significantly correlated with reduced media violence exposure and a reduction in aggressive behavior 6 months later Gentile et al. Parental mediation can moderate the relationship between media violence exposure and normative beliefs about aggression, i. Parental mediation is closely linked to decreased aggression caused by violent media Nathanson, ; Rasmussen, ; Padilla-Walker et al.
Further studies have shown that the autonomy-supportive restrictive mediation of parents is related to a reduction in current aggressive behavior by decreasing media violence exposure; conversely, inconsistent restrictive mediation is associated with an increase of current aggressive behavior by enhancing media violence exposure Fikkers et al. Despite GAM and CM hold opposite views on the relationship between violent video games and aggression, both of the two models imply the same idea that aggression cannot be separated from internal and external factors.
Although the CM considers that there is no significant relation between violent video games and aggression, it also acknowledges the role of external factors such as violent video games and family violence. Thus, these two models seem to be contradictory, but in fact, they reveal the mechanism of aggression from different points of view.
It will be more helpful to explore the effect of violent video games on aggression from the perspective of combination of internal and external factors. Although previous studies have investigated the roles of normative beliefs about aggression and family factors in the relationship between violent video games and adolescent aggression separately, the combined effect of these two factors remains unstudied.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the combined effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment. This can not only confirm the effects of violent video games on adolescent aggression further but also can clarify the influencing mechanism from the integration of GAM and CM to a certain extent. Based on the above, the following three hypotheses were proposed:.
Hypothesis 1: There is a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. Hypothesis 2: Normative beliefs about aggression are the mediator of exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. Hypothesis 3: The family environment can moderate the mediation effects of normative beliefs about aggression in exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression constitute a moderated mediation model.
All subjects gave informed written consent for participation in this investigation, and their parents signed parental written informed consent.
The study was reviewed and approved by the Professor Committee of School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, which is the committee responsible for providing ethics approvals.
A total of Chinese middle school students participated in this study, including boys and girls; students were from cities and towns, and from the countryside.
There were and junior and high school students, respectively. Ages ranged from 12 to 19 years, averaging The Video Game Questionnaire Anderson and Dill, required participants to list their favorite five video games and assess their use frequencies, the degree of violent content, and the degree of violent images on a 7-point scale 1, participants seldom play video games, with no violent content or image; 7, participants often play video games with many violent contents and images.
Chen et al. There were 29 items in AQ Buss and Perry, , including four dimensions: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. The scale used 5-point scoring criteria 1, very incongruent with my features; 5, very congruent with my features. Scores for each item were added to obtain the dimension score, and dimension scores were summed to obtain the total score. The Chinese version of AQ had good internal consistency reliability and construct validity Ying and Dai, The FES Moos, includes 90 true-false questions and is divided into 10 subscales, including cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, independence, achievement-orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, active-recreational orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization, and control.
Three subscales closely related to aggression were selected, including cohesion, conflict, and moral-religious emphasis, with 27 items in total. The family environment score was the sum of scores of these three subscales the conflict subscale was first inverted. A 4-point Likert scale is used 1, absolutely wrong; 4, absolutely right. The subjects were asked to assess the accuracy of the behavior described in each item.
High score means high level of normative beliefs about aggression. Its internal consistency coefficient and test-retest reliability are 0. Group testing was performed in randomly selected classes of six middle schools. All subjects completed the above four questionnaires.
IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used to analysis the correlations among study variables, the mediating effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, and the moderating role of family environment in the relationship between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression.
In order to validate the moderated mediation model, Mplus 7 was also used. In this study, self-reported questionnaires were used to collect data, and results might be influenced by common method bias. The results showed that eigenvalues of 34 unrotated factors were greater than 1, and the amount of variation explained by the first factor was Accordingly, common method bias was not significant in this study.
As described in Table 1 , the degree of exposure to violent video games showed significant positive correlations to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; family environment was negatively correlated to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; normative beliefs about aggression were significantly and positively related to aggression. Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations among study variables. To examine the mediation effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, gender factor was controlled firstly.
Thus, normative beliefs about aggression played a partial mediating role in exposure to violent video games and aggression. The mediation effect value was 0. Regression analysis was carried out after controlling gender factor Table 2. Table 2. Moderated mediation effect analysis of the relationship between violent video exposure and aggression.
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