Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Feingold, for the opportunity to testify here today. My written comments have been submitted for the record.
I’m here today in my capacity as a media researcher and a social psychologist to talk about the science of media effects. Like my colleagues here, I have read the research. Like them, I have come to the conclusion that televised violence likely does lead to increases in aggression among some adolescents—most often the ones in at-risk categories. I have no issue with that body of research.
The question is whether the same thing holds true with the work on video games, violent and otherwise. And my message to you here today is that we don’t know. People use words like “links” and “relationships,” which imply cause and effect, but that isnot well established yet. Based on what’s been published so far, I do not share my colleagues’ certainty at all, and I’d like to explain why.
The first reason is that we’ve been studying fish out of water. Gaming is a highly social activity, and we know from media research dating back to the 30s that social context can change media effects entirely. Some games have vibrant social communities and some have none. A massively multiplayer game like World of Warcraft is as unlike a game like Doom as Sesame Streetis from the Sopranos. The games are often apples and oranges, and many researchers don’t know one fruit from another.
I talk to gamers everyday. They say things like “GLA for the win,” and “-50 DKP,” and unless you enter their very social world, you won’t understand what meanings they are making.Bringing isolated people into a lab doesn’t gain us much because that’s not how people play, especially in the Internet era.When you include the social side you quickly find large effects, both good and bad. I’ve found and published both.
The second point is that we don’t know if we can trust a lot of the existing research because of how short it is. If I told you that we had a study that showed games causing aggression, and that the study lasted 30 minutes, you’d have a hard time then concluding that the games would also cause aggression over an hour, or a week or a year. For that you’d need a study that lasted an hour, week or year. Did you know thatall you’ve been given are these short studies? Theyusually last between 10 and 30 minutes and yet we’re all talking about years and lifespans. The other big problem is that with a study that short, we might be measuring excitement and not violence. That’s arousal, not aggression. You could get the same effects by having them throw a Frisbee.
In fact, when the studies last longer, it appears that the effects fade away. We don’t have a lot of these, but we do have two studies of one violent game. In the first study, the players played for 10 minutes and there were big effects. In the second study, the players played for 75 minutes and the effects were nearly gone. That means that there’s a very good chance they fade away or weren’t really there. Arousal was probably replaced with boredom or fatigue.
Last year I published the longest study to date investigating game violence. I had players play a game over a month, and not in a lab. The average play time was 56 hours, the longest research exposure to a game ever. And after 56 hours I found . . . nothing. No increases in violence, aggressive cognitions, anything. I’m not suggesting that that proves that games don’t cause violence. A different game, a different sample and different measures might find something. I also can’t say what two months would do. I’m not willing to make that leap the way others are. But when you look at the length of these studies and see results like mine, you have to become at least a little skeptical of the very strong claims that are being made.
I know that one of the reasons to hold this hearing is to find out why the state laws keep getting defeated. Let me explain why the laws are losing on the science. It’s because the legislators are only talking and listening to people who agree with them when in fact there is significant disagreement within academia.
I’ve read the Legislative Bibliography for the current California case, and I’ve seen materials from the state which claim that they’ve read all the applicable research. But they didn’t. There are studies that are missing, and entire methods which don’t appear on their list. The 75-minute study isn’t there. My one-month study isn’t there. There are entire research associations out there that weren’t consulted, one which specializes in media and another which specializes in games. And the entire body of anthropological work is ignored.Those decisions represent politics, not science. And if you read the courts’ opinions you see that the judges can tell.
I know that the CAMRA act is also making its way through Congress, so here is a place where we have some common ground. We really do need more and better research. I support CAMRA, but let me offer some suggestions of how to get rid of objections like mine.
First, don’t ask the Centers for Disease Control to administer studies of media. Media is not a controlled substance. If you want media researchers to respect it, consider the National Science Foundation. Second, amend the Act to include the social context of media use. It’s simply missing. More studies of college sophomores playing alone aren’t going to help anymore. We need studies of all ages and of how they actually play, which means studies of gamers playing with their friends, family and strangers online, at home, in Internet cafes, at school and at work. The networked world is the future of play and of research. And last, emphasize long term studies, controlled if possible. 10 and 30-minute studies are not sufficient for science to conclude long-term effects, and they shouldn’t be enough for policy makers either.
Senators, thank you again for the opportunity to speak here. It’s a rare thing for an academic to have the ear of policy makers and I take the responsibility seriously.
I study the media—its history, its economics, its effects, and its social impacts. And we’re here today to talk about video games, and to see if they are like or unlike other media.
As a historian of media, I can tell you that we have a long history of being suspicious about our media. Parents and politicians have sought to regulate, ban or ostracize a steady stream of media products starting at least with the novel and progressing through the nickelodeon, radio, telephones, comic books, motion pictures, swing, jazz and rock and roll. Each at one point was thought to corrupt young minds. It’s easy to find quotes showing that the Hardy Boys were a serious threat to young men’s moral values.
The question here is whether video games are simply another in a long line of misplaced worries or if they are something different. On the one hand, we have a reliable pattern of Americans being afraid of the wrong things. Typically we worry about the things we can easily target rather than the things that make us truly uneasy. For example, we’re here today to ask whether games have caused some kind of harm among adolescents due to violence or sexual predation, which is something of an unknown. Meanwhile, we know of significant, disturbing and well-known harms to minors that do relate to violence and sexual assault. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that there were one million verified cases of abused and neglected adolescents in 2003. That lead to 1,500 deaths, or about four a day. That number is probably low. So, it’s quite likely that two children have already died today due to abuse or neglect. And what’s disturbing is that that abuse doesn’t come from strangers, from media or from random acts. It comes from relatives and family friends. While we focus on the possibility of external dangers, the known and very real threats come from within. The thing is, it’s very uncomfortable to talk about how parents and relatives abuse and kill children, while it’s very easy to focus attention on something external like media.
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