Study: Violent Video Games Do Not Make Players More Aggressive in Real Life

A new scientific study has found no evidence to support claims that violent video games lead to real-life violence.

Experts and politicians have famously blamed video games for real-life displays of violence such as mass shootings, but their claims are disputed in the London-based study that was revealed on Friday — the same day as the release of the video game "Vanguard" from the "Call of Duty" series.

The research has been led by Dr. Agne Suziedelyte, senior lecturer in the Department of Economics at City, University of London, according to the Daily Mail.

To arrive at the findings, she looked at how the violent behavior of adolescent boys aged 8 to 18 were affected by the releases of new violent video games. Of interest to Suziedelyte were two types of violence — aggression against other people and destruction of property and things.

By using methods that identify "causal effects of violent video games on violence, rather than only associations," she found no evidence to support theories that the release of new video games increases violent behavior towards other people, the Daily Mail noted. She also revealed why parents found their children were more likely to become destructive after playing violent video games.

"Taken together, these results suggest that violent video games may agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people, which is the type of violence which we care about most," Suziedelyte said. "A likely explanation for my results is that video-game playing usually takes place at home, where opportunities to engage in violence are lower."

Several U.S. states have attempted to introduce policies restricting the sale of video games to minors, but Suziedelyte suggested these efforts could have little impact on real-life violence.

"Policies that place restrictions on video-game sales to minors are unlikely to reduce violence," she said, adding that, while sales of video games in the U.S. have increased since the1990s, violent crime rates have decreased during the same period. Furthermore, Suziedelyte suggested that, according to her study, video games that were both violent and nonviolent in nature, increased children's problem-solving ability.