Article in question
I'm going to draw extra attention to this following quote, just so the intentions of this article, or me posting this article, are not misconstrued.
"I've been studying the effects of video games on players for two decades now, most of it on violence. I think most people have come to accept that there's no relationship between violent video games and aggression or violent crime (despite some holdouts including the APA)," explained study author Christopher J. Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University. "However, people still ask a lot of questions about sexualization and whether games either make male players more sexist toward women or whether women players experience more body dissatisfaction and other well-being concerns. It's a much smaller research field than the violence field, so we hoped to bring some clarity to it."
"Overall, the 'moral panic' over video games and sexualization is pretty much following the 'paint-by-numbers' pattern of the video game debate. Lots of hyperbole and moral outrage, but very little evidence that video games are causing any 'harm' to either male or female players," Ferguson told PsyPost.
I'm going to draw extra attention to this following quote, just so the intentions of this article, or me posting this article, are not misconstrued.
"As a purely 'public health' issue, this doesn't appear to be much of a concern at all. That doesn't mean people can't advocate for better representations of females in games. They just need to be cautious not to make claims of 'harm' that can be easily debunked, thereby calling into question what might otherwise be reasonable advocacy goals."
"The major caveat is simply that many of the studies just aren't very good," Ferguson said. "The good news is that the higher quality studies were less likely to find evidence for negative effects than lower quality studies. In some cases, scholars probably interjected their personal moral opinions into the studies, if unintentionally. Granted it's still a fairly small research area, but this initial data has been so underwhelming that I'm not sure there's much to be mined here."
"Obviously, we go through these cycles of blaming media for social problems," the researcher added. "At least with fictional media, the evidence often reveals that we're probably scapegoating media and fiction rarely causes social problems. Again, to be fair, advocating for better representation of females in games can be a worthy cause even if the games don't cause harmful effects. I support those efforts, just hope advocates don't misrepresent the evidence as a part of their efforts (which, unfortunately, is all too common among advocacy groups)."
