Video games are always a hot topic when it comes to the woes of society. In recent years not only have video games been attacked for their violent content, but for their sexual content as well.  Many videogames show women in very little clothing, and men as rippling behemoths of muscle. This has led to some rising concerns about what negative effects on gamers seeing characters portrayed this way has had.

A research team wanted to see if seeing the sexualization of characters in videogames decreased mental well-being or increased misogyny. The team decided on doing a meta-analysis of previous research. They took 18 studies which measured exposure to sexualized video games, aggression/sexist attitudes toward women, anxiety, body image, and depression.

The researchers were not able to find any statistically significant pattern or link between video games and sexist attitudes and general mental well-being. The researcher pointed out, this “moral panic” seen in the media as a “public health issue” is pretty much the same that is/was seen with violence in video games, which has been shown over and over to not cause real world violence.

It is to be noted that the researchers found many of the studies were not done well, though the ones that were didn’t show any statistical link either.

Original Article: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/sexualized-video-games-are-not-causing-harm-to-male-or-female-players-according-to-new-research-63388

Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222001637