An analysis of data that was gathered from over 21,000 young people has found out that playing video games does not lead to violent behavior.

Video games are often said to have shown causing users or players to show aggression because they encourage competitive behavior.

Not only that, many believe that games cause people to become violent because they feature fights or the use of guns or allow controversial acts to take place without repercussion.

A group of researchers, led by Aaron Drummond from New Zealand’s Massey University, recently re-examined numerous studies that looked into video games and aggressive behavior.

In the meta-analysis, the data that they looked at included 28 studies dating back to 2008. When bundled together, the data show a statistically significant but minuscule positive correlation between gaming and aggression.

The studies report, which was published in the journal of Royal Society Open Science, said:

Thus, current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression.

The various studies reported a range of effects with some of them saying that there is a small positive correlation between violence and video-game use.

One 2011 study said that there is a negative correlation between video games and violence.

One common argument for the negative effect of gaming is that small harms can accumulate over time. This suggests that a player ends every game slightly more aggressively then over the long run, they might see meaningful change in that player and their temperament.

However, the study found no evidence for such accumulation. Instead, the study found evidence pointing in the opposite direction.

The authors of the study said that studies consistently found that the “long-term impacts of violent games on youth aggression are near zero”.

The authors concluded:

We call on both individual scholars as well as professional guilds such as the American Psychological Association to be more forthcoming about the extremely small observed relationship in longitudinal studies between violent games and youth aggression.

There you go folks, playing video games does not lead to violent behavior!