Violent Video Games: The Effects on Youth, and Public Policy Implications Summary

This chapter of the Handbook of Children, Culture, and Violence, written by Douglas A. Gentile and Craig A. Anderson, is about what effects violent video games can have on youths, and how they can cause the beginnings of aggressive behavior in youths. The first section of the chapter is about the history of video game violence, and how quickly it evolved. The next section covers several research methods for discovering if video game violence really does cause players to become aggressive. The last section is about the general risks that media violence can cause, though video games are still the main example. I've known about the research surrounding video game violence for some time, and this article actually showed me some examples of how the research is carried out. Also, despite all the good research and the proof that violent media can cause people to become violent, I still believe it's a perfectly fine thing to consume if it doesn't cause you to become aggressive. I've been playing violent video games for some time and it hasn't happened to me.