Adolescent video game playing and fighting over the long term

Citation

Ward, Michael (2018). Adolescent video game playing and fighting over the long term. 2018 Add Health Users Conference. Bethesda, MD.

Abstract

I present new evidence of the link between video game play and fighting. The estimates come from a large longitudinal data set tracking adolescents over time for various estimators. Consistent with previous research, there is a positive raw correlation between video game playing as an adolescent and the propensity to get into fights, even fights more than a decade later. However, these correlations are likely biased estimates of a causal relationship. Estimators that attempt to establish a causal link do not find this relationship. The implications are: that these results do not support policy further interventions, that researchers should exercise more care when attempting to uncover causal effects from media consumption, and that similar methodological approaches can be applied to the effects of other new communication technologies.

Reference Type

Conference proceeding

Book Title

2018 Add Health Users Conference

Author(s)

Ward, Michael

Year Published

2018

City of Publication

Bethesda, MD

Reference ID

9401