The effects video games have on America’s youth has been a hot topic for debate in recent years. Specifically, ultra violent video games have been charged with corrupting children, turning them into regular sociopathic Rambos.

While this may well be the horrifying truth, one genre of video game has slithered away from the public eye -- sports games. Games like Madden and NHL contain a boatload of violent content, allowing players to fight, tackle, and even injure the soulless polygons programed to imitate real life players. Do sport video games cause an increase in aggression and violent behavior in youths between the ages of eight and 14?

This topic is important because if shoot-em up video games may cause violent behavior, wouldn’t sports games, too? While Madden doesn’t allow you to virtually pick up a hooker and then blow her up with virtual C4, it does allow you to virtually engage in highly competitive violent altercations. Around 90 percent of children play video games. Among the top video games bought in 2012, were the sports games Fifa 13, Madden NFL 2013, and NBA 2k13. With those being the top bought purchased, it's safe to assume that tons of children are playing violent sports games. More importantly, children can easily and legally easy acquire sports games because of their kid friendly content rating. Sport games are the most easily purchased genre of video. The vast numbers of children exposed to the violent content in sports games is reason enough for society to care.     

Social learning theory has been used to guide research because it states that individuals learn characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes from observing other things in the media and in real life. One crucial concept of the social learning theory is identification. Identification is important because it is high and children, meaning they are more likely to identify with a model and then imitate them. This theory is appropriate because of its idea that we learn from models and that could be used to explain that children just imitate and partake in abstract modeling based on the characters in their favorite sport games.        

Furthermore, the social learning theory shows that models effect social relations. Therefore a child could, potentially, become meaner to others by viewing violent content. This is more prone to happen when the polygons in sports games are rewarded and praised for landing a big hit, known as dis-inhibitory effects. For instance, in the video game, Madden, when a player from the away team is tackled hard in an, often times, unnecessary and dangerous way the virtual crowd goes crazy. This may make the child feel that big hits produced by poor tackling technique, like keeping your head down when tackling, is the better option for when they actually go out and play football or another sport.              

An experiment is the only research method that could be used to answer the question, “Do sport video games cause an increase in aggression and violent behavior in male youths between the ages of eight and 14?” This is because only experiments are able to show causation. Children between the ages of eight and 14 would be chosen because, during those ages, individuals are most vulnerable to identification, but are still old enough to understand and play a video game. A random sample of boys and girls between the ages of eight and 14 from a population of the remote and un-contacted Sentielese people would be best to ensure the validity of the outcome of the experiment because the kids chosen would never have been exposed to video games (Survival International).

However, there are some problems that would arise conducting this experiment. For one, it would be hard to study and show causation for the long-term effects that sport video games have on children’s aggression and behavior. But, the biggest problem is that people are polysemic, meaning that things affect individuals differently, and because of that there would be no way to truly generalize the results of the experiment.                

Many variables need to be included in order to ensure that the children are violent because of the video game, not because of some outside variable. The children’s age, gender, living conditions, and school disciplinary record would need to be included to ensure some outside reason for their anger. The amount of violent content would also be important. Additionally, the sports that the child plays in school, and his or her knowledge on the sport, may influence whether or not they are affected. Furthermore, the amount of time the children play video games would need to be examined in order for us to know the average amount of time it takes for a game to corrupt a child, if it does at all.                 

If games like Grand Theft Auto don’t turn your child into a cat killing psycho, then sports games may finish off the job with their violent content. The media and mothers, alike, neglect the violent content in sports video games, a genre that is easy available to children and probably being played by them this very second. While a experiment would be hard to conduct about this question, it would be beneficial to try in order to compare the findings with other experiments regarding violent video games.