Study Suggest Violent Video Games Makes Kids Eat more and Cheat!

Study Suggest Violent Video Games Makes Kids Eat more and Cheat!

They have finally found conclusive evidence that Video Games are making our kids fat cheaters. That’s at least what a study coming out of Ohio State University is suggesting.

The study was conducted by having 172 Italian students either play violent or non-violent games and then conduct a test of honesty. While playing either type of video game participants were given a bowl of M&Ms to see whether the type of video game would effect how much the participants ate. The students wee either given a Grand Theft Auto game or a Pinball and Golf game, so clearly it was going for the most extreme opposite of games. After playing the games, the participants were asked to take a test to win raffle tickets, which they were then able to retrieve their won tickets from an unsupervised envelope to see if they would take more than their allocated tickets.

The results of the study found that students who were playing Grand Theft Auto ate 3 times more M&Ms than those who played the Non-violent video games, finally showing that Grand Theft Auto is a cause of obesity..wait, what? Likewise, the study found that students who played the violent video games were more likely to “steal” raffle tickets while  unsupervised. Together, these findings suggest that playing violent video games makes players less restrained. The study also suggest that males were more susceptible to this change in behavior than females, but females were also susceptible to the change.

So, should we throw our violent video games out the window for fear that we’ll put on pounds and rig the local raffle? (I’M GUNNA GET THAT BAKED CAKE AT ANY COST!) No. Of course not. These results only show a behavior pattern in a small sample of students that may not represent the population of gamers. Likewise, it hard to make the assumption that stealing raffle tickets from a hypothetical raffle means anymore than what it is.  Similarly, maybe one should ask what about playing games like GTA make players snack more than less encompassing games like 3D Pinball. It may not necessarily be a result of the violence in the video game, but rather the level of experience the gamer is having.

Meh, who knows. Ohio State may have to do additional research to prove their hypothesis.