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Annotated Bibliography

Impact of Video Games on Society

Jayson Ewell

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

23 Oct 2018

Annotated Bibliography
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DeCamp, Whitney. “Who Plays Violent Video Games? An Exploratory Analysis of Predictors of

Playing Violent Games.” Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 117, 5 Oct. 2017,

pp. 260–266. Accessed 20 Oct. 2018.

The journal article analyzes studies done on the people that play violent video games with

the purpose of finding a correlation between factors such a person’s environment at home

and their use of violent video games. The results of the studies suggest that violent video

games do not cause players to become aggressive or violent. Instead, the conditions in

which the players are raised have an impact on their opinions toward violence. The

author, Whitney DeCamp, is the director of the Kercher Center for Social Research and a

sociology professor at Western Michigan University. His work has been featured by

CNN, Time Magazines, NBC News and more. This is evidence that DeCamp is a

credible source of information. A large portion of the information in the article is useful

to my thesis. The article also provides some counterarguments that I can attempt to refute

in my paper.

“Video Games and Children: Playing with Violence.” Academy of Child and Adolescent

Psychiatry, June 2015, www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-

Guide/Children-and-Video-Games-Playing-with-Violence-091.aspx. Accessed 22 Oct. 2018.

The website’s focus is the mental wellness of children. It mentions the negative aspects

of video games like foul language, the perpetuation of stereotypes and violence. It also

lists the negative impacts video games can have on children, such as lack of social skills

and exercise, and how parents can avoid these problems, such as enforcing screen time

limits and encouraging physical activity. While I do not necessarily disagree with

anything on the website, it takes a very biased stance on the subject. There is also no
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listed author to the page and it has not been updated for three years. I may not use the

information from this website in my article unless it is for the sake of counterarguing.

Yenigun, Sami. “Video Game Violence: Why Do We Like It, And What's It Doing To Us?”

NPR, 11 Feb. 2013, www.npr.org/2013/02/11/171698919/video-game-violence-why-do-

we-like-it-and-whats-it-doing-to-us. Accessed 21 Oct. 2018.

The news story brings up the reasons violent video games are so popular and whether or

not they cause children to become more violent. Violent video games have the same

hormonal influences on players as if they were in a real fight; levels of adrenaline,

testosterone and cortisol increase, causing players to pay more attention and become okay

with what you are doing in-game, whether it be shooting an enemy in Call of Duty or

ripping their head off in Mortal Kombat. While this does raise levels of aggression in

children, this does not directly equate to becoming more violent or becoming a murderer.

The story also goes on to explain that violent video games are fun because they do not

put the players in harm’s way, and the players have control of the events of the games

they play. The author of this story seeks out information from a professor at Iowa State

University, Douglas Gentile, who studies the effects of violent video games on children,

as well as average consumers of these games. The story was also made five years ago,

which hinders its reliability. With all of this in mind, I believe that the information in this

story brings up many ideas such as the impacts of increased aggression in children. The

opinions of those who play violent video games and the information from the professor

will be used in my paper.