The effects of violent video games on aggression - A meta-analysis

Violent content video games such as Mortal Kombat and Doom have become very popular among children and adolescents, causing great concern for parents, teachers, and policy makers. This study cumulates findings across existing empirical research on the effects of violent video games to estimate overall effect size and discern important trends and moderating variables, Results suggest there is a smaller effect of violent video games on aggression than has been found with television violence on aggression. This effect is positively associated with type of game violence and negatively related to time spent playing the games, Directions for future programmatic research on video games are outlined.