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Impact and Deeper Implications of Nerf, War Play, and Violent Media
Aggression and Boys
***I decided not to add any information about the effect of violent and aggressive toys and media on girls, but if you would like to do some more research please visit the Learn More section at the bottom of the home page. I have linked an article related to NERF and girls there to help you start your research!
There is currently much debate about play fighting and the use of violent toys. Does it help boys exercise their aggression in a nonharmful way, or does it encourage future aggression and violence?
Below you will find two different opinions and analyses from two different sources. While these ideas are meant to highlight some thoughts around boys and aggression, they are in no means the 'right answer' and may not answer any questions about aggression and boys. My goal in including them is to shed professional light on these topics to gain a better understanding of the impact of Nerf guns on boys.
A study done by Karen Ellen Goff at Iowa State University titled, “The relation of violent and nonviolent toys to play behavior in preschoolers” looked at violent play through many lenses including gender, exposure to violence, parental influence, and many more. Some questions that guided her research were: Is aggression a violent behavior? Is repressing it frustrating? (So playing with war toys helps release this “pent-up aggression”) Do violent toys serve as cues for children to act aggressively? (So war toys actually increase real aggression). She found that boys were more likely to have guns at home. Also, she also discovered that boys played more aggressively with nonviolent toys than girls. Additionally, kids that played more aggressively with nonviolent toys had favorite toys that were deemed violent.
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For more info about how this study relates to exposure to violence, see the "Exposure" section below.
To read the full study, click here.
*Note: It's important to remember that the words violence and aggression are not synonymous. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines aggression as "hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront" and violence as "behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something." In looking at the correlation between boys, aggression, and violence, please try to keep these definitions in mind.
In an article published in the Encyclopedia of Early Child Development from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, authors Jennifer L. Hart and Michelle T. Tannock assert that play fighting "lacks the intent to harm emotionally or physically" and that important educational teachings are lost without play fighting. Furthermore, the support of play aggression actually benefits development. These ideas are underscored by the idea that the "act of pretending to be aggressive does not equate to aggression."
To read the full article, click here .
World Perception
The way kids assess the world around them is not quite the same way as adults. While children are able to distinguish between what is real and not, their accuracy in doing so is dependent on age. This is important because young kids that play with Nerf guns may have a difficult time understanding the difference between behaviors that they see in the media and their own lives. Contrarily, it also shows that the target groups for Nerf guns, around 8-13-year-old boys, are capable of making that distinction. So, does this initial impairment even affect Nerf or toy gun users?
In the article "Revisiting the Fantasy-Reality Distinction: Children as Naïve Skeptics," authors Jacqueline D. Woolley and Maliki E. Ghossainy state that while kids are able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, they often make mistakes about the reality status of something. They also "[e]xhibit skepticism toward the reality status of novel entities and events.” Essentially, kids can tell the difference between what is real and not but were more likely to doubt or be suspicious about what is real. Woolley and Ghossainy even went as far as to say that, “when assessing reality status, children are as likely to doubt as they are to believe.” Around age 7 is when kids begin to gain a sense more comparable to an adults' assessment of reality vs fantasy. ​​​​
In the article and study titled, "Dragons and Dinosaurs: The Child's Capacity to Differentiate Fantasy from Reality," Patricia Morison and Howard Gardner touch on the fact that the ability to classify things as fantasy increases with age. Their study focused on this idea of a child's ability to classify things as fantasy. Morison and Gardner say that it is misleading to say they can't distinguish between real and pretend, but their findings suggest that, “it is more accurate to describe the distinction [between reality and fantasy] as one that is less well articulated and less firmly established in young children.”
Exposure​
Effects
“The relation of violent and nonviolent toys to play behavior in preschoolers” by Karen Ellen Goff
Goff knows that play is necessary for child development. She wanted to investigate aggression and how violent toys connected to a child's need to act aggressively. In her study, she used three-year-old to five-year-old boys. In her study, Goff gave some groups of kids violent toys first and others non-violent toys first, then switched toys within the groups.
“The relation of violent and nonviolent toys to play behavior in preschoolers” by Karen Ellen Goff
Goff found that gender correlated to the violence level of the kid’s favorite toys, violence level of the kid's favorite TV shows, and amount of violent TV consumed, the frequency of toy gun play with boys having more violent interests. Goff's research supports the hypothesis that exposure to things previously associated with aggression incites further aggression. Goff believes that "having the violent toy condition prior to the nonviolent toy condition 'primes' these children for pretend play involving aggression."
Her study is not wholly conclusive but does reveal that all forms of aggression were higher in play with violent toys than in nonviolent toys.
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"Effects of Exposure to Gun Violence in Movies on Children’s Interest in Real Guns" by Kelly P. Dillon and Brad J. Bushman
In their study, Dillon and Bushman showed some groups of young kids PG movie clips with guns in them and groups of kids movies without guns or violence in them. They then asked kids to play with a couple of toys, including toy guns. In the arsenal, there was also a real gun (that was safe and could not fire). ​​
"Effects of Exposure to Gun Violence in Movies on Children’s Interest in Real Guns" by Kelly P. Dillon and Brad J. Bushman
Children who saw the movie clips with guns in them pulled the triggers on the toy guns more often and 5x longer than the kids who did not see the movie with guns in it. They also played more aggressively, more often fired at people, and mimicked semi-automatic weapons with their toys while talking about "blowing heads off." Of those who saw the nonviolent movie clip, they didn't use guns as much and avoided shooting at each other for the most part. 82.7%% of kids found the real gun (the movie clip watched did not impact this) and 42.3% handled the gun. Dillon and Bushman's conclusion was that "children who see movie characters use guns are more likely to use guns themselves.”
