Playing Violent Digital Games and Openly Aggressive Behavior by Children and Adolescents: A Literature Review on the Direction of Effects

The majority of adolescents play digital games and many play violent ones. That youngsters with more intensive use of violent digital games would increase their physically aggressive behavior measured outside the laboratory over time, was supported in a meta-analysis from 2018. The overall socialization effect of beta = 0.11 was, however, modest. It was reduced to a unique effect of beta = 0.08 for playing violent digital games, when third variables which also explain the physically aggressive behavior were included. In addition, selection effects must be taken into account, which are based on aggressive individuals' preferences for violent digital games. Of the ten studies in this meta-analysis which analyzed the direction of effects in cross-lagged-panel or special regression designs, three established socialization effects only, two found bidirectional effects, three found selection effects only, and two found neither effect. Selection effects were more likely to be found in larger samples and in samples with young adolescents whose preference for violent games was less stable. This more complex result is discussed before the background of the biological, cognitive, and social transitions at the beginning of adolescence.