Lethal recreations: how violent computer games can affect the teenage brain

A series of recent scientific studies suggests repeated playing of explicit video games might desensitise young people to violence

On 20 April 1999 two American teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and shot 13 people dead, leaving another 23 wounded. Three years later, a German teenager, Robert Steinhaueser, murdered 16 people as he walked through Gutenberg school in Erfurt brandishing a pump-action shotgun.

Both incidents have been linked to violent video games. Harris and Klebold enjoyed playing a game called Doom, which is licensed to the US military to train soldiers in lethal combat. Steinhaueser is reported to have spent hours playing some of the most brutal computer games money can buy. "It may be that these helped him to lose his grip on reality," said a former schoolmate.

What really drove these young men to such extreme acts of violence will never be fully explained – all three ended their shooting sprees by turning their guns on themselves. But could violent videos have played a role in fomenting the type of aggression that can, at least in some people, lead to real violence against others?

Harris is known to have made a customised version of Doom with two gunmen carrying extra weapons and unlimited ammunition to shoot at unarmed victims who cannot fight back. For a class project Harris and Klebold had made a videotape that was similar to their customised version of Doom. In the tape, they are seen dressed in trench coats, they carry guns and they shoot school athletes. One investigator said that when Harris and Klebold shot people for real, they were "playing out their game in God mode".

Studies into the effects of violent video games, and before them research into the effects of violent films and television, have never been unequivocally clear-cut. For every Harris and Klebold there are thousands of other boys who have been fed a diet of violent videos from a very early age without showing any pathological tendencies.

Doug Lowenstein, president of the International Digital Software Association, is an outspoken critic of those who suggest a link between violent computer games and real-life aggressiveness. "I think the issue has been vastly overblown and overstated, often by politicians and others who don't fully understand, frankly, this industry. There is absolutely no evidence, none, that playing a violent video game leads to aggressive behaviour," he said.

In recent years, though, a number of studies have begun to show that violent video games might indeed increase the risk of some young men committing real acts of aggression. A few researchers have gone as far as to suggest that the evidence could be used as the basis for legal controls on the sort of computer games that can be sold.

"The active nature of the learning environment of the video game suggests that this medium is potentially more dangerous than the more heavily investigated TV and movie media," says Craig Anderson of the University of Missouri-Columbia and Karen Dill of Iowa State University in a study published last year. "With the recent trend toward greater realism and more graphic violence in video games, consumers and parents of consumers should be aware of these potential risks," they say.

Games such as The Getaway and Grand Theft Auto, involving high-speed car chases, have become bestsellers in Britain in recent months.

The research by Anderson and Dill used games such as Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Mortal Kombat on two sets of college students. "One study reveals that young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games," the researchers say.

"The other study reveals that even a brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behaviour in all types of participants," they say.

The first study involved 227 students who were interviewed about their general attitudes to aggression and any past involvement in violent behaviour. Those who played more violent video games in the past were also more likely to be aggressive.

During the second study, involving 210 students who played either a violent video game or a non-violent game, the researchers investigated the likelihood that the players would "punish" an opponent with a noisy blast of varying intensity. Those who had just finished the violent game were more likely to be more aggressive in their punishment.

"In the short run, playing a violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts. Longer-term effects are likely to be longer lasting as well, as the player learns and practises new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for use when real-life conflict situations arise," say Anderson and Dill.

Other studies have suggested that violent video games might affect some children more than others. One study, for instance, has shown that the brains of youths with disruptive behaviour disorders react differently to violent scenes than normal youngsters.

Brain scans of disruptive adolescents have revealed that the part behind the forehead controlling inhibitions is less active than that of their peers when viewing a violent video. "Scans show less brain activity in the frontal lobe while the youths with disruptive behaviour disorders watch violent video games," said Vincent Mathews of Indiana University, who led the investigation.

The researchers also found that among sub-groups of the non-aggressive adolescents, there were differences in brain function dependent upon the amount of violent media exposure that they reported experiencing on television and in violent video games during the past year.

"There appears to be a difference in the way the brain responds, depending on the amount of past violent media exposure through video games, movies and television," Dr Mathews said. "These early findings confirm there is a difference in the brain-activation patterns of youths with disruptive behaviour disorders and those without when exposed to a specific stimulus. There also may be a relationship between violent media exposure and brain activity in normal subjects," he said.

An underlying theme in this research is whether children are born with aggressive tendencies or whether they learn to be aggressive during their upbringing.

Robert DuRant, a paediatrics researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, is adamant that aggression is learnt.

"Children learn violent behaviours in primary social groups, such as the family and peer groups, as well as observe it in their neighbourhoods and in the community at large," Professor DuRant said.

"These behaviours are reinforced by what children and adolescents see on television, on the internet and in video games and movies, observe in music videos and hear in their music," he said.

A study published in 2000 found that children with aggressive tendencies were more likely to choose violent video games but the reason for their choice was unclear. One possibility could be simply that an aggressive child likes to work off his or her aggression playing a violent video. Another possibility is that children who routinely play violent computer games for long periods develop aggressive tendencies as a result.

Whatever the relationship, one thing is clear – that video games are becoming more violent, more graphic and more prevalent. And the debate over their role in fostering adolescent violence is becoming more intense.

FACING THE FACTS

There have been about 25 studies on the impact of violent video games on behaviour. None has studied a group over a sustained period. The results have been varied although young children consistently imitated what they had seen in the short term.

BT forced Sony to re-edit The Getaway ­ which sold 250,000 on the day of its release ­ because it featured a man dressed as a BT engineer. The anti-hero of the game stole a BT van and overalls before going on a rampage.

A $330m (£200m) lawsuit filed against several entertainment companies by the families of three victims of a high-school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, was dismissed, based on findings that the video game makers could not have foreseen what the killer would do and that games were not subject to product-liability law. A decade earlier, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that the makers of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons were not liable for a teenager's suicide.