Washington, May 4 (ANI): Teenagers who are highly exposed to violent video games—three or more hours per day—show blunted physical and psychological responses to playing a violent game, a new study has revealed.
The paper by Malena Ivarsson of the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University and colleagues states that “high versus low experience of violent gaming seems to be related to different physiological, emotional and sleep related processes [after] exposure to violent video games.”
The experimental study included two groups of boys, aged 13 to 15, with differing exposure to violent video games.
Fifteen boys were highly exposed to violent gaming, playing at least three hours per day. The other fifteen had low exposure, no more than one hour per day.
The researchers monitored the boys’ reactions to playing two different video games: a violent game (“Manhunt”) and a nonviolent cartoon game (“Animaniacs”).
The boys played the games at home, on two different evenings, for two hours each.
Physiological, emotional, and sleep reactions to the two games were compared for boys with high versus low exposure.
Although there were few differences in reactions during the time spent playing the games, some significant differences appeared later.
While sleeping later that night, boys in the low-exposure group had faster heart rates after playing the violent game, compared to the night after playing the nonviolent game.
In contrast, for boys in the high-exposure group, heart rate was lower on the night after playing the violent game.
There were also some significant differences in heart rate variability (HRV), which measures beat-to-beat variations in heart rate.
The patterns of HRV differences suggested blunting of sympathetic nervous system reactions among boys in the high-exposure group.
On sleep questionnaires, low-exposed boys also reported lower sleep quality on the night after playing the violent game, compared to the nonviolent game.
For high-exposed boys, there was no difference in sleep quality after playing the two games.
After playing the violent game, the low-exposed boys reported increased feelings of sadness.
The study is published in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. (ANI)