Are violent video games linked to violent behaviour?

Many studies have linked violent video games to an increase of violent behaviour in an individual, and it is a common ( and sometimes very heated debate) and as someone who quite enjoyis blowing zombies heads off in games i thought it would be interesting to look at;

lets look at one study more closely -
okay so- Many studies have linked violence in TV shows and video games to violent behavior. But when states have tried to keep under-18 kids from playing games rated M ( or 18 in the uk), the proposed restrictions have often been challenged and beaten in court.
In the study Dr. Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., of Iowa State University in Ames, and his colleagues looked at how children and teen's video game habits at one time point related to their behavior three to six months later.
The study included three groups of kids: 181 Japanese students ages 12 to 15; 1,050 Japanese students aged 13 to 18; and 364 U.S. kids ages 9 to 12.

The U.S. children listed their three favorite games and how often they played them. In the younger Japanese group, the researchers looked at how often the children played five different violent video game genres, e.g fighting, shooting...
and in the older group they looked at the amount of violence in the their favorite game genres and the time they spent playing them each week.

SO
In every group, children who were exposed to more video game violence did become more aggressive over time than their peers who had less exposure.( both the children involved in the study and their peers ( parents/friends/teachers) rated their levels of agression of the course of the study.
This was true even after the researchers took into account how aggressive the children were at the beginning of the study -- a strong predictor of future bad behavior.

Not too good!!
Many studies agree with the basic hypothesis this one studied, that playing violent video games does have an effect on how violent you are yourself.. for example, one study cited this as a true fact,
Myth 6. There are no studies linking violent video game play to serious aggression.
Facts: High levels of violent video game exposure have been linked to delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods, and violent criminal behavior (e.g., self-reported assault, robbery).

so, from the looks of it, violent video games CAN ( though of course this is not to say EVERYONE will be affected) make you more violent?!
Not going to stop me playing Left 4 Dead though im afraid...

Over and Out :D x