Theory and research on media violence provides evidence that aggressive youth seek out media violence and that media violence prospectively predicts aggression in youth. The authors argue that both relationships, when modeled over time, should be mutually reinforcing, in what they call a downward spiral model. This study uses multilevel modeling to examine individual growth curves in aggressiveness and violent media use. The measure of use of media violence included viewing action films, playing violent computer and video games, and visiting violence-oriented Internet sites by students from 20 middle schools in 10 different regions in the United States. The findings appear largely consistent with the proposed model. In particular, concurrent effects of aggressiveness on violent-media use and concurrent and lagged effects of violent media use on aggressiveness were found. The implications of this model for theorizing about media effects on youth, and for bridging active audience with media effects perspectives, are discussed. Read more...

Purpose: To determine what kind of violence-related behavior or opinion is directly related to excessive media use among adolescents in Switzerland. Methods: A national representative sample of 4222 schoolchildren (7th- and 8th-graders; mean age 13.9 years) answered questions on the frequency of television-viewing, electronic game-playing, feeling unsafe at school, bullying others, hitting others, and fighting with others, as part of the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) international collaborative study protocol. The Chi-square tests and multiple logistic regression analyses were applied to high-risk groups of adolescents. Results: For the total sample, all bivariate relationships between television-viewing/electronic game-playing and each violence-related variable are significant. In the multivariate comparison, physical violence among boys ceases to be significant. For girls, only television-viewing is linked to indirect violence. Against the hypothesis, females' electronic game-playing only had a bearing on hitting others. Conclusions: Experimental designs are needed that take into account gender, different forms of media, and violence to answer the question of whether excessive media use leads to violent behavior. With the exception of excessive electronic game-playing among girls, this study found that electronic media are not thought to lead directly to real-life violence but to hostility and indirect violence. Read more...

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Digital games have typically been considered a male leisure activity; however, recent statistics indicate that increasing numbers of females are now playing games. The purpose of this review is to investigate how the influx of girl gamers and the emergence of female-oriented game design can inform instructional design for the construction of interactive learning environments. This review presents an overview of digital games and gender, an outline of girl games and 'pink' software, a discussion of the controversy of girl games, and a review and discussion of the research and implications of female-oriented game design for instructional design. The goal of this review is to examine the influx of girl gamers into a male pastime and to analyse the implications of this for the design of interactive learning environments. Read more...

The authors address the question of whether associations between video games and cognitive and metacognitive variables depend either on the features of the computer or on the content of the game that the computer allows one to play. An experiment to separate these two kinds of effects was carried out by using a traditional version and a computer-supported version of Pegopolis, a solitaire game. The two versions were exactly the same except that they were played by moving pieces either on a real board or on a virtual computer-presented board. The performance levels and strategies followed during the game by the 40 undergraduates who took part in the experiment were not significantly different in the real and virtual conditions. None of the participants transferred playing strategies or practice from one version of the game to the other. Scores were not affected by gender or by the studies pursued by participants, the habit of playing games in the traditional manner or playing video games, or intelligence. Retrospective reports did not support differences in the subjective experience between the two versions. Results showed that video games, when they do not make much use of the computer's special features, produce effects because of the situations they simulate rather than because of features of the computer itself. Read more...