It’s just a game, isn’t it? 

By Ryan Moran, Staff Writer

Video games with violence have always been a hot button issue when it comes to the effects on young children. 

The truth is, many experts say that there is no link between video games and violence. "Games have only become more realistic. The players of games and violent games have only become more diverse. And they're played all around the world now," said professor Andrew Przybylski from the University of Oxford, "But the only place where you see this kind of narrative still holds any water, that games and violence are related to each other, is in the United States."

NHS Senior Sean Butters weighed in: “Violence has no bearing whatsoever on the human brain. Any violence from kids is usually a result of how they were brought up” he said.

Recently there have been a few studies to show that there is no correlation between video games and violence. One particular study was done by Przybylski. He conducted a study in the UK that studied over 1,000 kids and found no link between time spent playing violent video games and aggressive behavior. Because of studies like this, experts are now thinking that there is very little link, if any, between video games and violence. 

Video games aren't without any effect on people’s aggression, Przybylski says. "There's no doubt when a game is really hard or very frustrating or you lose, you get pissed off. The question that you have to ask yourself is, do people go out and do mass shootings after they rage-quit 'Call of Duty'?" 

It’s hard to definitively say whether or not video games cause aggression but recent studies are in favor of video games being relatively harmless. 

NHS Senior David Laakso says this on the subject: “It depends, I mostly agree. You might get mad at a game but all you’ll do is throw your controller.”