Suzanne+Fredland

=__ **The Parent's Understanding of Violent Video Games** __ =

**Kids: three children****(one boy, two girls)**
My interviewee (my mother) had children that were born in the 70’s and 80’s during a time when video games began to take a hold on the media industry. After reading Anderson’s “Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life,” I created a list of questions that would help understand a parent’s perception of the affect of violence in video games on their children.

Anderson and Dill (2000) state that, “violent video game play was positively related to increases in aggressive behavior (p. 16).” With the basic understanding that video game play does have an effect on aggressive behavior, I wanted to understand if a parent would be able to make that same connection.

2. What sort of violent content was in the video game? 3. How do you feel this affected the behavior of your children? 4. Do you feel that video games are more or less violent now than when your children played video games? 5. Do you feel that current games are more or less influential on a child’s behavior than games from the past?
 * The questions proposed to my interviewee were:** 1. As a parent, did you allow your children to play violent video games?

In response to question one, my mother was completely confident that she never let her children play violent video games. I had to remind her that she allowed us to play video games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, as well as shooting games such as Contra.

After remembering that she had let her children play violent video games, she was able to answer the further questions. She had not been able to connect video game violence with her children’s behavior. She was unaware of their violence towards one another because of the video games, rather she just assumed they hit and fought with one another due to being kids.

Several times she had to have public services from the police due to extreme violence in her home. Her son was jailed during high school for bringing a knife to school and showing it off to his friends. Her daughter was prone to temper tantrums and becoming so enraged that she would punch holes in the walls and ruin door frames from constantly slamming doors.

Despite all of this behavior, she was unaware of the relationship between video game violence and this aggressive behavior. The limitation in her ability to understand the relationship that Anderson and Dill point out on the correlation between violence in video games and aggressive behavior is due to her understanding of why kids do the things kids do. As a child, video games were not part of her life (as explained to me), so in return she assumed children merely acted up because they chose to misbehave or be violent, not because they were exposed to ideas through new media such as video games.

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After making a connection between video game violence and aggressive behavior in children, she answered that current violent video games are more violent and realistic which would cause children exposed to these games to become more violent and aggressive.

Anderson, C. and Dill, K (2000). Videogames and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. //Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78//, 353-359.