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Abstract The potential influence of violent video games on youth violence remains an issue of concern for psychologists, policymakers and the general public. Although several prospective studies of video game violence effects have been conducted, none have employed well validated measures of youth violence, nor considered video game violence effects in context with other influences on youth violence such as family environment, peer delinquency, and depressive symptoms. The current study builds upon previous research in a sample of 302 (52.3% female) mostly Hispanic youth. Results indicated that current levels of depressive symptoms were a strong predictor of serious aggression and violence across most outcome measures. Depressive symptoms also interacted with antisocial traits so that antisocial individuals with depressive symptoms were most inclined toward youth violence. Neither video game violence exposure, nor television violence exposure, were prospective predictors of serious acts of youth aggression or violence. These results are put into the context of criminological data on serious acts of violence among youth.
Keywords Computer games * Mass media * Aggression * Violence * Adolescence
Received: 24 September 2010 / Accepted: 9 November 2010 / Published online: 14 December 2010
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Introduction
Concerns about the potential influence of violent video games on serious acts of youth aggression and violence have been debated in the general public, among policy makers and among social scientists for several decades. At present, a general consensus on video game violence effects has been elusive, with great debate occurring among scholars in this field. Some scholars have concluded that strong video game violence effects on aggression have been conclusively and causally demonstrated in wide segments of the population (e.g., Anderson et al. 2008; Anderson 2004). Others have concluded that video game violence may have only weak effects on youth aggression, or may only influence some youth, particularly those already at-risk for violence (e.g., Giumetti and Markey 2007; Kirsh 1998; Markey and Scherer 2009). Still others have concluded that video game violence effects on youth aggression are either essentially null, or that the field of video game violence studies has difficulties with methodological problems to such an extent that meaningful conclusions cannot be made about the existing research (e.g., Durkin and Barber 2002; Kutner and Olson 2008;...