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TechnoratiFor their study, researchers included products without blood and gore, establishing violent media as “those that depict characters intentionally harming other characters who presumably wish to avoid being harmed.”
“[E]ven children's video games that lack depictions of blood and gore can, and frequently do, include violence,” they explained.
In their report, researchers highlighted the importance of their findings, noting that youth violence is a public health issue in the United States because it accounts for so many deaths.
In 2005, 12- to 20-year-olds committed 28 percent of the single-offender violent crimes in the United States and 41 percent of the multiple-offender crimes despite comprising only 13 percent of the population.
“Only accidental injury consistently leads homicide as the cause of death of 1- to 24-year-olds,” the researchers added.
They also noted that over 90 percent of all games classified by the industry's ratings group as appropriate for everyone aged 10 and older (E10+) contain violence.
Furthermore, over 75 percent of teenaged gamers under 17 report playing mature-rated video games (the most graphically violent type) despite industry-wide restrictions.
“If playing violent video games has harmful effects on some portion of players, then the vast majority of American youth are highly exposed to an unnecessary risk factor,” the researchers stated.
Until the recent research, there had only been one published longitudinal study with children that specifically examined longer-term effects of exposure to violent video games, and no studies had investigated longitudinal effects in low violence cultures.
A similar longitudinal analysis with several additional variables and fewer participants was reported in 2007, using the 364 U.S. participants of the latest study.
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