An Exploratory Study
Executive Summary
Dr Guy Cumberbatch, Andrea Maguire and Samantha Woods
Concerns that young people are now hooked on violent computer or video games and are becoming increasingly violent because of them received little support from a new study published today.
The report Children and Video Games by Aston University's Communications Research Group probed the experiences of children aged 7-16. It surveyed 150 children selected for their particular interest in video games and quizzed them about both their own experiences and that of their playmates (totalling a further 418 children).
"We were surprised to find that video game playing was in the top three preferred pastimes in only 1 in 5 (20%) children surveyed" said Dr Cumberbatch, Research Director. "Eight out of ten children said they preferred other activities". Sporting activities (such as cricket, football, biking and tennis) were the most popular, mentioned by 1 in 3 children. Television was amongst the least popular (mentioned by only 8%). "All the evidence points to video games being essentially a time filler. Less than 1 in 7 (15%) children had given up hobbies or reduced time spent doing them to play video games." said Dr Cumberbatch. Boys were four times more likely to have given up hobbies than girls, but no age difference emerged (15% of under 12s and 14% of 12s and over had given up hobbies to play video games).
"What was especially interesting about this exploratory study was the way in which children discussed with us some adult concerns about addiction to video games and whether they could make children more violent" commented Dr Cumberbatch. Thus, when asked if young people could get "addicted" to video games, almost all children (97%) agreed. But nearly as many (84%) said that children could get addicted to other hobbies and provided numerous examples of this.
Children were probed about violence. Nearly three quarters of the sample admitted to losing their temper when playing video games. However, when asked whether they lost their temper more often with video games than with other things, most children said no. Children who said no outnumbered those who said yes by 6:4. Could video games make children more violent? Here worries that children do not care about adult concerns are denied by the data. Just over half (58%) of children thought that video games could make people more violent, but when probed on whether the violence was serious or pretend violence in the form of play fighting, only one child thought that this was serious - because it could start as pretend but then "turn serious when someone was accidentally hurt." Most children (74%) had their games installed in their bedrooms and admitted that parents knew little about the games they played. Most children (61%) thought that there should be parental restrictions on the time that young children spend on the video games and a further 52% recommended restrictions on the type of game.
However, only 42% reported any
restrictions on the time they were allowed to play and only 3% reported
parental restrictions on the type of game. This compared with 30%
of the sample who mentioned parental restrictions on how much
television they could watch and 58%
saying that their parents restricted the programmes they could watch.
Dr Cumberbatch concluded "The most
evident problem about video games is the lack of knowledge we have
about them.
Adults - perhaps essentially parents, are pretty much in the dark
about what children do with their machines. The research so far
is
rather reassuring and the children surveyed showed an intelligent
interest
in the concerns sometimes expressed by adults. But we know very
little
about how children use their leisure time and even less about where
video
games fit into their lives and socialisation experiences."
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