Media Violence Use and Aggression Among German Adolescents: Associations and Trajectories of Change in a Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

To address the longitudinal associations between adolescents’ use of media violence and aggression, 1,715 high school students in Germany participated in 3 measurements over a 2-year period. Self-reported physical aggression and teacher-rated overall aggression were the outcome variables. A destructive testing approach showed that media violence predicted both self-reported physical aggression and teacher-rated aggression over 24 months, controlling for initial aggression as well as several sociodemographic and psychological covariates. Nonviolent media use was unrelated to self-reported or teacher-rated aggression. Latent growth mixture modeling identified 3 trajectories of use stable low, stable high, and desistance and parallel trajectories of self-reported physical aggression were found. Participants in the stable high group scored higher on aggressive behavior at the first wave than did stable low users. Desisters differed significantly from stable high users by showing a decrease in aggressive behavior over time. The findings are discussed in terms of the unique role of media violence use as a risk factor for adolescent aggression.