Modern Warfare 2, Fox & Friends and violent media

"A popular new videogame actually allows you to be a terrorist and kill people," says host Steve Doocy as he points at the camera. "Is this fantasy game just a little too real and is it appropriate?" The ensuing debate between Common Sense Media's CEO Jim Steyer and John Christensen from SlashGamer.com did little to shed much light on the subject save for acknowledge that Modern Warfare 2, and other games like it, are violent.

"Is it ever appropriate to simulate killing people?" Doocy asked, to which Steyer replied "there's no question that there's a correlation between videogame violence and screen violence and aggression," before citing an American Academy of Pediatrics study that he said made a statement to that effect. He was actually referring to a conclusion made in the November issue of Pediatrics that said "the evidence is now clear and convincing: media violence is one of the casual factors of real-life violence and aggression." If you want to read the full report, you can find it here.

But what does this actually mean? Earlier this year Christian Barnes-Young, a professional counselor and clinical consultant for the Continuum of Care wrote an essay for family-oriented videogame site What They Play acknowledging "There is a tendency among gamers, and some parents, to dismiss scientific research that indicates a link between exposure to violent media and aggression." He went on to explain, "The scientific community has been researching the impact of violent media (including videogames) on aggression for decades. During this time, researchers have become more confident that a relationship does exist between violent media and aggressive behavior and that the strength of this relationship has increased since the research was begun (and gaming has become more popular). Brad Bushman and Craig Anderson at the University of Iowa wrote in 2001, 'Since 1975, the scientific confidence and statistical magnitude of this link have been clearly positive and have consistently increased over time.' The relationship is fairly simple and goes like this: With exposure to violent media, individuals are more likely to think, feel, and behave aggressively. Now, the size of the impact that violent media has on aggression has traditionally been described as weak; however, video games are reported to have the strongest relationship with aggression among the various forms of media due to the active involvement of the player. In other words, because videogame players actively control game content, as opposed to passively watching it, the experience has a greater impact on the player.

So, will playing Modern Warfare 2 make you violent? Probably not, but they can apparently stimulate feelings that are already there. "Scientific studies have found that exposure to violent media can result in short-term increases in aggressive thoughts, feelings of irritability or anger, and aggressive behavior," Barnes-Young explained. "The long-term effects should not be interpreted as a causal relationship - no experiments have exposed participants to violent media for years to see what happens.

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