The effect of violence computer games on the levels of aggression and cyber bullying of university students

The aim of this study is to reveal how playing violent computer games affects university students' levels of aggression and cyberbullying / being exposed to, and the opinions of university students on the effects of playing violent games on aggression and cyberbullying / being exposed to. The mixed method was utilized in this study and the study consisted of two stages. In the first stage, which constitutes the quantitative part of the research, weak experimental design was made, and content analysis was made in the qualitative part of the second stage. In the first stage, Counter-Strike v1.6, a violent FPS game, was played continuously for one hour every week in one month for 27 students studying in the Department of Computer and Instructional Technologies at Amasya University Faculty of Education in the 2018-2019 academic year. It was ensured that all students played against each other as multi-players over the local network, not with bots, that is not against artificial intelligence, and in this way, it was aimed to increase the in-game struggle. The students were asked to increase the validity of the research by playing these and similar violent games in their free time if they want during the experimental process. KAR-YA Aggression Scale (Karataş and Yavuzer, 2016) and Cyber Victimization and Bullying Scale (Çetin, Yaman, and Peker, 2011) were used in the study to collect quantitative data. The scales were administered to all participants as a pre-test before starting the implementation, and then the implementation was started. At the end of the four-week application process, the same scales were applied to the students as a post-test. The analyzes of the collected data were made in the SPSS v25 program. Content analysis, correlation analysis and Dependent Sample T-Test were applied for the results. In the qualitative part of the study, 8 participants from the experimental group who wanted to participate in the study voluntarily were asked questions in the interview form prepared by conducting a pilot study, and the interviews were written and qualitative data were obtained. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis method. According to the results of the data analysis, there is no significant relationship between the weekly playing time of the students and the levels of aggression and cyber bullying / being exposed. It was observed that violent games did not have a significant effect on students 'physical aggression, hostility, anger, verbal aggression and total aggression levels, and violent games did not have a significant effect on students' levels of language bullying, hiding their identity, cyber forgery and cyber bullying / being exposed to in cyber environment. In line with these results, in order to explain the quantitative data analysis results of the research in this mixed method study, the qualitative data of the study was conducted with eight volunteer participants selected among the people in the experimental group. As a result of the qualitative data analysis, three main themes emerged: demographic information, aggression and cyberbullying. Under the theme of aggression, the definition of physical aggression, the example of physical aggression, the definition of verbal aggression, examples of verbal aggression, the participants' experience of aggression, the participants' feeling of hostility, the relationship of aggression with violent games and the participant opinion categories that the experimental process did not affect aggression were revealed. It was observed that the participants described physical aggression with codes of applying force to a living thing or an object, causing material damage to a person and harming bodily movements. Participants' views on violent games and the relationship of aggression were examined in two cases as not having a relationship and having a relationship. The situation of having a relationship was explained with the codes of lowering the anger threshold, raising awareness, negativity in cognitive thinking, decreased level of aggression, uncontrolled game environment, the distinction of reality and virtual perception, lower age group while the situation of not having a relationship was explained with the codes of purpose of playing games, adult age group, personality trait and virtual reality discrimination. Under the theme of cyberbullying, the definition of cyberbullying, cyber victimization and cyber experience, opinions about cyber bullies, the experience of hiding identity in cyber environment, opinions about hiding identity in cyber environment, the realism of the cyber environment, cyber forgery experience, hacker ethics, violent games and participant views categories have emerged regarding the fact that the cyber bullying relationship and the experimental process do not affect cyberbullying. It was observed that the participants defined cyberbullying with the codes of embarrassing on the internet, threatening over the internet, psychological violence on the internet, harassing on social networks, and disturbing using technology. Participants' views on the relationship between violent games and cyberbullying were examined in two different situations: having a relationship and having no relationship. The situation of having a relationship was explained with the codes of encouragement to illegal activities, habituation, negativity in cognitive thinking, decrease in the level of cyberbullying and young age group and the absence of relationship was explained with the codes of adult age group, personality character, purpose of gameplay and virtual reality discrimination. In conclusion, according to the quantitative findings, it was observed that violent computer games had no effect on aggression and cyberbullying, but according to qualitative findings, participants thought that violent computer games had an effect on aggression and cyberbullying.