A lacrosse player at Auburn University was charged last week with stealing a pickup truck, kidnapping a woman, and nine counts of hit-and-run for crashing into nine cars on what was a joyride spree intended to recreate the video game “Grand Theft Auto V,” which was released Sept 17, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Zachary Burgess, 20, of Hoover, Ala., allegedly went on this spree in Baton Rouge, La., where police said he took a woman captive in the truck and held her against her will. She was able to escape the truck and get to a safe place, one police officer noted, according to a report on the local NBC affiliate, here.
After posting an $80,000 bond, Mr Burgess was released and was reportedly back in class shortly after the incident.
The woman didn’t say she was “forcibly” held but intimated that Mr Burgess was zoned out during the incident. He allegedly told an officer during questioning that he “wanted to see what it was really like to play the video game Grand Theft Auto,” NBC reported.
The events described have led some people to reignite a debate about whether video games cause violence in young people who play them often.
In a Sept 20 article in The Centinel, the student newspaper at Centennial High School in Champaign, Ill., reporter Leon Phanrana said he asked one teacher about the possible connection between violent video games and violent behavior in young people.
“It could be a factor if the murderer had no positives in their life and if they had a mental issue,” the article quoted Greg Stock as saying. Mr Stock teaches social studies at Centennial.
So what does the research say?
Opinions are one thing, but peer-reviewed research is another. Unfortunately for our analysis, the research points both ways on the question of video games causing violence in young people. However, it does seem to depend, as Mr Stock suggests, on the mental status of the teenager.
One study, published last month in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, says video games like Grand Theft Auto don’t make vulnerable teens more prone to violence.
Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University and independent researcher Cheryl Olson studied 377 American children with an average age of 13. All these teens had some mental problem, such as depression or elevated attention deficit tendencies.
“We found no evidence that violent video games increase bullying or delinquent behavior among vulnerable youth with clinically elevated mental health symptoms,” Dr Ferguson said.
The findings don’t support the belief that violent video games increase aggression in youth who have a predisposition to mental health problems, as the researchers found no association between the playing of violent video games and subsequent increased delinquent criminality or bullying in children with mental health diagnoses.
But a study published in March out of Iowa State University suggests violent video games are linked with youth violence and delinquency.
Matt DeLisi, a professor of sociology, said his group’s research shows a strong connection between playing violent video games and later turning to criminal behavior, even when controlling for a history of violence and psychopathic traits among juvenile offenders.
“When critics say, ‘Well, it’s probably not video games, it’s probably how antisocial they are,’ we can address that directly because we controlled for a lot of things that we know matter,” he said. “Even if you account for the child’s sex, age, race, the age they were first referred to juvenile court—which is a very powerful effect—and a bunch of other media effects, like screen time and exposure. Even with all of that, the video game measure still mattered.”
The results were not unexpected, but somewhat surprising for Douglas Gentile, an associate professor of psychology at Iowa State, who has studied the effects of video game violence exposure and minor aggression, like hitting, teasing and name-calling.
“I didn’t expect to see much of an effect when we got to serious delinquent and criminal level aggression because youth who commit that level of aggression have a lot of things going wrong for them. They often have a lot of risk factors and very few protective factors in their lives,” he said.
Wondering what to tell young people about video games? Or, how to explain the damage Mr Burgess allegedly caused or shootings like Adam Lanza’s in Newtown?
The body of research suggests there are multiple factors that put young people at risk for violence. Video games may play a role, or they may not. Parents should evaluate their own children and try to understand the effect violent video games may have for them.
“I think parents need to be truthful and honest about who their children are in terms of their psychiatric functioning,” Dr DeLisi said. “If you have a kid who is antisocial, who is a little bit vulnerable to influence, giving them something that allows them to escape into themselves for a long period of time isn’t a healthy thing.”
