We’ve spoken to Christopher J. Ferguson before, for our Crusade In Search Of A Crisis feature on R18+, but now he’s written an opinion piece for the ABC, in response to Barbara Biggins’s rant earlier last week, and claims that he worries when “research on VVG is misrepresented to the public, whether by activists or politicians”.
The best studies now coming out — those which take care to use well-validated clinical outcome measures and which carefully control for other important risk factors — provide no support for the belief that VVG contributes to youth violence. I’ve recently published a prospective study of youth violence which finds that mental health problems are the main predictor of negative outcomes, not VVG or television.
This is an important observation, for as many societies are becoming worked up about VVG, they are simultaneously slashing funding to education and mental health services for children.
There also seems to be little evidence that VVG causes a reduction in empathy or civic behaviour. In another recent study of mine I found that youth exposed to VVG actually engaged in more pro-social behaviours.
I’d thoroughly recommend reading the piece here, as an introduction to his work. But if you feel like investigating further some of his work can be found here. Ferguson also guest edited an issue of the Review of General Psychology Journal which focused specifically on video games, which makes for some great reading.
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