The Kids are Not Alright: Video Games and Children’s Desensitization to Violence

There was a time in the past decade or so when some people believed that playing violent video games, particularly shooters, could lead to later becoming a killer. While, at this point, that theory has been falsified, it is interesting to look into how playing these games is affecting the behavior and development of children, as it is extremely clear through hundreds of studies and experiments that media does have a psychological impact on people of all ages, but especially children. As someone who has a little brother who I have watched grow and change over the years, I think this conversation is extremely relevant concerning this new generation of kids who has always had exposure to specifically handheld media such as iPads, tablets, and mobile phones. 

When my brother was about five years old, he started asking to play Fortnite, an online shooter game that gained popularity after being released in 2017. He no doubt heard about it from YouTube videos he watched online and from his friends whose parents had allowed them to play the game, but my mother insisted that he could not play until he was at least 8 years old. On his 8th birthday, he downloaded Fortnite on his playstation. Since then, he has devoted several hundreds of hours to playing the game, eventually getting a Nintendo Switch and being able to play it on the go. It is easy to become desensitized to what one does in the game, particularly due to the lack of blood and guts displayed, making it easier for someone to take the violent acts in stride. The most obvious changes to him came in how he acted when he played the game, growing angry to the point of yelling and hysterics upon losing, being moved to tears and frustration when our family refused to play alongside him in Duo mode, and fighting with my parents about when he could play, for how long, and when he needed to turn it off.

Promotional Image from Fortnite

I also began to notice his desensitization to violence, both while playing the game and in every day interactions. He became much more sinister, often making exclamations while killing other players in the game or as he was hunting them down. He also began to adopt more violent language. For example, I told him one afternoon to get his stuff off the counter because our mother liked for it to be clear when she got home and he replied “yeah, she’d see that and kill herself.” I spent 10 minutes having a conversation with him about why saying something like that was not okay, and the next day he made a comment about killing me because I laughed at him. While things like this might not seem like the biggest deal, it has been a very noticeable change in his behavior before and after adopting this game, as I wasn’t even aware my brother had considered what suicide was until he made that statement. I also think my generation has become particularly desensitized to violent language, with many of us often throwing around “kill myself” on any given day, and while that is particularly problematic, there is something extra concerning about hearing it come out of the mouth of a nine year old.

Beyond just my personal conjecture, there is research to backup the change I have noticed in my brother. According to one 2017 study, “the effects of screen violence on increased aggressive behavior have been reviewed and affirmed by numerous major scientific organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the US Surgeon General, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the International Society for Research on Aggression” (Anderson et al 2017). The study went on to discuss what causes aggression and aggressive behavior and how exposure to violent media can increase those triggers, such as “aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiologic arousal, hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior” while decreasing “prosocial behavior (eg, helping others) and empathy” (Anderson et al 2017). Playing video games is an easy trigger for many of these things, as I’ve watched my brother grow incredibly angry and hostile while playing games both toward other players and myself and my family members.

Figure 1 from “Screen Violence and Youth Behavior” Depicting Changes during Video Game Play

Obviously, though, the change in my brother and other children cannot all be attributed to video games, as the study cites violent media, including film and television. In this same time period, my parents have allowed my brother to be exposed to more mature and violent media like Marvel movies, Dune, etc., and these could be having a similar or worse impact on him than the games he plays. Regardless, there has been a change for the worse in the way my brother views death and violence and it is very clear from watching him play a round of Fortnite that it is not helping the situation.

So this leaves the question of what can be done to fix this issue? Expose kids to violent media at an older age? Sit them down and talk to them about the serious implications of the silly games they play? Ultimately, I don’t have the answer and scientists don’t fully either, as keeping children sheltered from all ideas of both real and fictional violence can also be harmful in providing them a false sense of the world. It also is possible to place this pressure on these games, as Fortnite does have a teen rating, but my brother who is not a teen regularly plays the game and it is a known thing that many children are playing the game at all hours of the day. I believe as a society we are growing more and more desensitized to violence, but now it is starting at younger and younger ages due to the prevalence of personal media devices owned by children and it ultimately takes greater awareness for the problem to be addressed and, eventually, solved. 

-Sarah Beth

Sources:

1. Anderson, Craig A et al. “Screen Violence and Youth Behavior.” Pediatrics vol. 140,Suppl 2 

(2017): S142-S147. doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1758T

2. Brockmyer, Jeanne Funk. “Desensitization and Violent Video Games: Mechanisms and 

Evidence.” Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America vol. 31,1 (2022): 

121-132. doi:10.1016/j.chc.2021.06.005

3. Damour, Lisa. “Parenting the Fortnite Addict.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 

Apr. 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/well/family/parenting-the-fortnite-addict.html. 

Games and Girlhood: The Impact of Games Using Avatars on Adolescent Girls

In recent months, there has been a continued conversation around the death of girlhood for adolescent girls and the reclamation of it by young adult women. As I have witnessed these things simultaneously occurring, it has led to me reflecting on my own experiences as an adolescent girl and my experience of girlhood. Several things came to mind, such as instrumental shows like Hannah Montana and sleepovers with bracelet making and the sharing of diary entries. I also could not help thinking of how the internet and, eventually, social media influenced this period of my life as well, with things such as Snapchat, Wattpad, and getting an iPod touch with text and FaceTime pushing me toward more mature and sometimes inappropriate topics. The one place where that line was blurred (and where I spent a large portion of time) was within online gaming sites.

Me in 6th grade

I loved playing any kind of game online in which I could build an avatar and interact with other people using free chat. It started out more innocently, with games like Poptropica, Club Penguin, Pixie Hollow, and Build-a-Bear. However, as those games closed down over time, I turned to mobile games that would help me accomplish similar purposes. I played some games that allowed me to make life choices, but where it was isolated only to me, like how Episode allowed me to make my own choices within a pre-written story and Virtual Families allowed me to build a life within a house from young adulthood to death (similarly to The Sims). I also ventured into games similar to the ones I had been playing before, but much more mature, such as Avakin Life and IMVU. All of these games dealt with much more teen and adult themes, with the avatars being young adult women. The main difference, however, was the game culture.

One big shift was in the presentation of avatars. On games like Pixie Hollow and Build-A-Bear, even though the avatars were not children, they were not sexualized. For both body and clothing options, there was nothing overly sexual about the presentation of one’s avatar. In these mobile games, however, this is very much not the case, with the games putting an emphasis on avatar makeup, skimpier clothes, and even lingerie. For young girls playing these games, this was very much a shift and led to a pressure of appearing “sexy” and an early sexualization that did not align with the earthly, physical form of a middle school girl. This directly led into a culture of relationships and sex within these games that many young girls played into. While playing games like Club Penguin and Pixie Hollow, there was very much an established culture of talking to boys online and getting a “boyfriend” within the game. While very strange, the limitations of the chats allowed for nothing to get too inappropriate, though you are very quickly taught workarounds for certain words (i.e. “kits” to say “kiss,” etc.). To whatever extent you wished, you could have a virtual romantic experience on these games despite many of the players being younger than thirteen (I began playing on these games myself when I was eight or nine years old).

Pixie Hollow and Build-A-Bear avatars, which are nonsexual for adolescent play

With this pre-established culture in mind, in approaching games like IMVU and Avakin Life, young girls are exposed at a young age to a very predatory online space, especially given that there is much more room within the free chat on these apps, as certain curse words are allowed, as well as some more sexual phrases. And this culture is heavily played into by male (presenting) players in these games, as any “attractive” Avatar they come upon they can privately message. As a fourteen year old on these games, I often received some weird, fetishizing (my Avatar was Black like myself), and creepy messages that I was not mature enough to handle. Games like Episode were not much better, with many of the stories involving sex and allowing the characters to be naked with black bars covering the most intimate parts despite most of the players being middle school girls.

IMVU avatars

While these games were obviously being played by myself way earlier than they should have (some of them were meant for 16+ years), it was the standard among other girls my age. I constantly talked to my best friends about Episode and what story I was playing at the time. I connected with friends virtually on games where our avatars didn’t quite look like ourselves. This was viewed as a ritual of teen girlhood, a normalcy, an aging up of sorts. Looking back on it now, though, it was our own death of girlhood, though it happened for me at a much later age than it is happening to girls now (or even then). With social media, this is an even bigger problem than it was before, but thinking back to this experience leads me to wonder if I was like the Sephora girls all along. 

Me in 7th grade 

Obviously, though the games have protections in place to prevent young girls like me from engaging in those games or conversations, it is easy to slip past the cracks; and more than that, it is expected. Although these games can be great for the imaginations of girls and allowing them to explore things such as style through their avatars and other worlds that don’t exist outside of the virtual space, I wonder if the cons outweigh the pros when, ultimately, these games create harmful environments that sexualize young girls and put them in a space where they can more easily be harassed. Girls are outgrowing adolescence at younger and younger ages now, hence this uprising of the reclamation of girlhood we see today. In bringing awareness to the issues on these sites and apps, we can very quickly see that this loss of innocence of young girls constantly happening at earlier and earlier ages is not fun and games. 

-Sarah Beth