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Do Older Adults Hate Video Games until they Play them? A Proof-of-Concept Study

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Abstract

The issue of negative video game influences on youth remains contentious in public debate, the scholarly community and among policy makers. Recent research has indicated that negative attitudes toward video games are, in part, generational in nature with older adults more inclined to endorse negative beliefs about video games. The current mixed design study examined the impact of exposure to games on beliefs about video games in a small (n = 34) sample of older adults. Results indicated that older adults were more concerned about video games as an abstract concept but when exposed to a particular video game, even an M-rated violent game, expressed fewer concerns about that specific video game. Results support the hypothesis that negative attitudes toward video games exists mainly in the abstract and do not survive direct exposure to individual games. Further, older adults were not uniform in their condemnation of video games with older adults having varying opinions about the harmfulness of video games. Related to specific concerns, older adults tended to worry more about issues such as addiction than they did violent content.

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Notes

  1. A moral panic refers to a social phenomenon in which some form of “folk devil” (Cohen 1972) is blamed for a perceived social problem, real or imagined. Moral panics allow society to focus anger on a vilified object, group or phenomenon perceived as reflecting declining morality. Many moral panics focus on supposed decadence, corruption or declining moral values among youth, and the involvement of moral panic in scholarly claims of alleged media effects has been well documented (Bowman 2016, Ferguson 2013).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stetson University, 421 N. Woodland Blvd, DeLand, FL, 32729, USA

    Christopher J. Ferguson

  2. Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300, Copenhagen S, Denmark

    Rune K. L. Nielsen

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW, London, UK

    Ryan Maguire

Authors
  1. Christopher J. Ferguson
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  2. Rune K. L. Nielsen
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  3. Ryan Maguire
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher J. Ferguson.

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None to declare.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Appendix

Appendix

Qualitative Questions

  1. 1)

    Before playing the video game, what were your thoughts about video game violence?

  2. 2)

    Did playing the game cause you to rethink your position on video game violence?

  3. 3)

    Do you remember whether, in your youth, some forms of media seemed to get picked on as causing problems in society? Did you agree with those concerns then? Does the issue of video games seem similar or different?

  4. 4)

    How did you feel about playing the video game? What did you like about it? What didn’t you like about it?

  5. 5)

    Violent video games probably aren’t going away. What could the video game industry do to reduce society’s fears about violent video games?

  6. 6)

    Are you familiar with the ESRB ratings system for video games? (Explain if says no). Does knowing this ratings system exists to help parents make decisions for their families ease your concerns about violent video games? Why/why not?

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Ferguson, C.J., Nielsen, R.K.L. & Maguire, R. Do Older Adults Hate Video Games until they Play them? A Proof-of-Concept Study. Curr Psychol 36, 919–926 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9480-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9480-9

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