A new study suggest that there is a correlation between young teens who play violent video games and a lack of empathy towards others.

The study, which was performed at Brock University in Ontario, looked at roughly 100 students who were either 13 or 14 years old. The research discovered that over 50% played games every day, violent ones were among the majority. They define violent video games as “those where players acted out the killing, maiming, decapitating or mutilating of other human characters,” according to BBC News.

The study learned that many of these games were played for around 1 to 3 hours, and the teenagers that played closer to 1 hour showed no distressing signs, while those that played 3 hours or more showed a deficit in empathy, concern, or trust for other people.

According to the study, “spending too much time within the virtual world of violence may prevent [gamers] from getting involved in different positive social experiences in real life, and in developing a positive sense of what is right and wrong.” In other words, these teens were more likely to commit violent acts than the ones who play less violent games.

Uh oh, all of a sudden the anti-video game legislation we’ve all laughed at may have some teeth. Then again, this is just one study and we all know how studies can be skewed to get the results we want. More research definitely needs to be done. Alternatively, we could say the cold has screwed up the brains of Canadians and this only applies to our friends up north. Yep, I’ll go with the last one.

[via BBC News]