Much Ado About Very Little: Angry Everything, Practically [Angry Birds]

A newly published study challenges the often-angry claim that video games make kids more violent. The study is:

“Angry Birds, Angry Children, and Angry Meta-Analysts: A Reanalysis,” Luis Furuya-Kanamori [pictured here] and Suhail A. R. Doi, Perspectives on Psychological Science, vol. 11, no. 3, May 2016, pp.  408-414. (Thanks to Neil Martin for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at Australian National University, explain:

“As suggested by Markey (2015), we reanalyzed the data without a preconceived opinion about the effects of video games on children mental health. We found a very small effect size for the association of video games and aggressive behavior… We are quite confident that our results accurately demonstrate that violent and general video games exposure has a statistically significant, yet very small, effect size associated with aggression in children that in effect could represent no association.”