Relationship between Exposure to Violence In The Cpmputer Games And Aggressive Behavior Among Early Adolescent Students

Background: computer games have become one of the favorite activities of children. Although computer games are designed to be entertaining, challenging, and sometimes educational, most include violent content.  Despite many reports that the exposure to violent computer games is a causal risk factor, the public remains largely unaware of these risks, and adolescents' exposure to violent computer games remains extremely high. Objectives: The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between exposure to violence in the computer games and aggressive behavior among early adolescent students. Subjects and Method: The present study was carried out in six preparatory schools located in Port-Said City, which were randomly chosen representing the three zones of Port-Said Governorate. The subjects of the study comprised of 501 school students (287 were females and 214 were males), their age ranging from 12 to 15 years and recruited randomly from every educational grade at each randomly selected school, and their teachers of the Arabic subject, their number was 16 teachers. Five tools were utilized to collect the necessary data for this study.  Results: the majority of the students played computer games. More than three quarters of them spent playing computer games from one to two hours on weekdays. On the other hand, slightly less than two thirds of the students played three hours or more on weekend.  Almost three quarters of the studied students preferred to play computer games without violent content, compared to less than one third of them preferred playing games with violent content. There were statistically significant correlations between playing violent computer games and physical and verbal aggression as perceived by the studied students and their teachers. Finally, there were highly statistically significant correlations between parents control over computer game choices and students' physical and social aggression as perceived by their teachers. Conclusion: Playing computer games are popular leisure activities among early adolescents. The study revealed that, there was a statistically significant correlation between levels of physical and verbal aggression and exposure to violent computer games among early adolescents in Port-Said city.