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Videogames Affirm Violence Among Kids?
Thanks to Mainichi.co.jp for their report on a new Japanese survey claiming young videogame-playing children are more violent. According to the Ochanomizu University study, "The more elementary school students play video games, the more likely they are to get irritated and want to hit others." However, the story also points out that "Another study on British children also released at the International Simulation and Gaming Association meeting gave different results, finding that those who preferred violent games more were not as aggressive in their actual lifestyles", leading to the inevitable conclusion that there's no definite answer - though that Japanese survey did suggest that "In video games it is common for players to be awarded 'points' for violent actions, and there may be aspects in which violence is taken affirmatively."
It's time to wake up and smell the gore, folks. You can't divide your personality between unpent aggresion in the electronic world and turn around and be a nice, happy guy the rest of the time. And, in years and years of reading Slashdot, I have yet to see a *single* study that suggested otherwise.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Is it that the more they play videogames, the more they become violent....
Or is it, the more violent they are, the more they play videogames? (Possibly to take out some of that violence, without having to actually hurt anything in real life?)
Personally, I think it's the second option.
Fnord.
I really think its the context of the violence that needs to be looked at. I for one feel that a game like Wind Waker, or the more gorey Eternal Darkness aren't bad, even though they are quite violent in their own right. I think a 10 year old (if the gore doesn't "damage" them) can play a good violent game in which the violence is a stance against "evil" and come out a better person. Violence in games can help instill morals into youngsters in my opinion. If a video game child is getting beat on, and the human controlled video game hero knocks the crap out of the one hurting the child, i think it does more good for the player than bad. It's needless violence in games that needs to be policed by parents and retailers. NO young kid should be able to play GTA3.
PaleHour
Something tells me that these kids have issues, and thus see the violence as a way to express themselves, instead of holding it in.
So the cause of the violence is likely something else, because a healthy child would not be influenced because the child knows how to deal with his anger productivly.
So instead of barring videogames, they might try understanding what haunts their children.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
words and art do not create feelings which do not exist -- they reveal feelings which already exist. there are reasons why kids are growing more and more violent, but these reasons have nothing to do with which video games they are playing -- if they did not have violent feelings already they would not be playing violent video games. they choose the art which suits their feelings, not the other way around.
humans are a violent species -- we're wired for physical violence from head to toes. one would think that we would rather kids excercise their violence through video games than through other people.
MORTAR COMBAT!
- Excessively violent games make kid's violent, so should be banned.
- Excessively violent kids play excessively violent games, so those who play such games obsessively should be watched.
Somehow, I suspect you would not be comfortable with either conclusion.Let me put it to you another way: I have four kids under six. Recently, they discovered Tom and Jerry. Since they discovered Tom and Jerry, I've noticed a distinctive change in their play - they've become more aggressive, they've started smacking each other with blunt objects and laughing, etc. Now, there are two possibilities: either Tom and Jerry unmasked latent violent issues already present in my kids, or Tom and Jerry caused them to be violent.
Either way, the cause is "Tom and Jerry" and the solution is to turn off the damn TV. The hell of it is, in my belief system, everyone has violent tendencies to be unmasked. (This belief would also tend to be confirmed by most psychological findings I've seen.) They may be close to the surface, on the surface, or deeply buried, but they're there. Whether this is because we're all neurotic or because we're all victims of sin I'll leave up to you. In either case, anything that brings that latent violence closer to the surface is potentially a bad thing. And, like it or not, violent TV and games seem to unmask latent violence.
Is Tom and Jerry or Grand Theft Auto really too much to give up so my two year old doesn't smack my five year old with a broom? I don't think so. Is Lord of the Rings too much to give up? Hell yes. The difference is that, in one case, violence is put out in a very unrealistic way - no consequences, no real victims. In the other, violence is associated with suffering. In one case, we have art, and in the other we have a kind of macabre, violent masturbation trying to ride on the coat-tails of art. It's like the difference between a great nude photograph and porn - one revels in the beauty of the human body, the other just seeks to possess it.
And, No, I don't have any problem making that judgment. If you do, maybe your palate has been burned off by constant exposure to the esthetic equivalent of MD20/20, and you should try to clear it a bit?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
...when will you admit that videogames aren't alone in this, as the same could be said about literature or film?
You know it seems as if we humans would like to blame everything else for our lack of basic parenting skills. Why can't these people face it that the are failing as parents? No before you all go TROLL on me I understand that these days both parents must work, they are stressed out, they didn't ask for it blah blah blah. You know there is a way to prevent having kids-condoms, or abstinence. There are cons to procreation.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Even if these studies are true or false, the real problem lies with the solutions
What I mean by that is some idiot lawmaker will jump the gun and introduce legislation effectively banning games.
Games are ESRB rated for a reason, and that is to help PARENTS decide if if a game is right for a child.
So the problem is with the parents who don't keep track of their kids habits, and next thing they know, their kid will be shooting up some school because they didn't get enough attention because their parents are too busy to provide proper love and guidence
Too many zeros, not enough ones
Just wanted to post a big Amen! to the parent post. Great job. Give the guy a hand moderators!
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Something that everyone is forgetting whenever this topic comes up is that human beings are violent creatures. Not everyone, some more than others, but human beings have an inherent violence within them. We start wars, we rape, we kill... It's an orgy of violence on this planet! (!!!) And that's just reality I'm talking about.
Look, seriously, if I ever have children, they're probably not going to be sleeping with hookers and running people over in showers of blood until they're quite a bit older. However, kids that are more prone to violence will get their violence from books, comics, television (No!), video games (Liar!), or the school playground. Don't you remember that loving voice of your mother when she'd scream "Stop that rough-housing! or "Don't throw that at her!"
We could eliminate every violent medium on this planet, and it would not eliminate violence, because the violence starts with *us*. We're the ones who put the violence in there in the first place, so we're where the solutions have to start.
But Japanese videogames tend to be *less* violent than their other media. For whatever reason they don't like violent games, and their games generally contain no blood. Witness the endless churn of Final Fantasy games - turn based spell casting, magic attacks that make enemies vanish instead of explode, etc; dog walking games; dating simulators; and pokemon "collect everything" games. Take the Resident Evil series (or Silent Hill) for example - made in Japan, but has it's prime audience in rest of the world - which is why the movie was a hollywood production.
HOWEVER, other violent forms of media *DO* sell in Japan. Hentai comics and animations (eg: can you say schoolgirl tentacle rape), and the new style of super-violent movie that's popularlised over there (eg: Audition / The Killer). And interestingly enough these forms of entertainment that American audiences don't want to buy are *NOT* even mentioned by the study.
As for England: they pretty much enjoy violent games like Quake / Resident Evil (like the US), although the top-selling PC game this year has been a soccer management simulator.
Not everyone who plays videogames is violent.
Not everyone who is violent plays videogames.
How much impression the games make on the kids probably has to do with the age and type of exposure; how involved the parents are in instilling values and bringing up their children.
I glanced through the other comments and didn't see this brought up directly. I did see a lot of people claiming that we could no longer deny that videogames caused violence in children.
However, the study only showed a correlation between the levels of violence a child expressed and the amount of videogames s/he played. That does not, however, mean that videogames neccesarily caused the violent behaviour. In fact, given that they said the level of violence and videogame playing was independent of the type of games the child played, I'd be more inclined to suppose that rather than videogames causing violence, the level of violence expressed by the child is in direct proportion to the need to expunge said violence in the form of games.
Thus, the more violent the child, the more games they'd play. Not the other way around (more games -> more violent).
Given that this could largely be the result of competitive/aggressive behaviour, I'd like to see this compared to a study of children who willingly play competitive sports. (This may be tricky, as it'd neccesarily need to be children who aren't in the sport because their parents want them to be, rather those who play for fun).
An even more simple comparison may be that of a child who practices target shooting/archery (specifically not hunting, though, to remove the aspect of hurting another living being) as those are non-harmful sides of weapons designed for violence.
Of course, in the end videogames may feed their aggressive behaviour and encourage it, which may not be a good thing, but given that the games the people played didn't relate to the length of time/amount of violence displayed I'd wonder if the games didn't serve more as a way for the child to blow off steam.
I want to find whoever wrote this article, pull them out of their car in traffic, shoot them in the head, kick them repeatedly while they're probably already dead, and then, as a finishing move, rip off my face and eat them.
I WILL HAVE A FLAWLESS VICTORY OVER THIS ARTICLE!!
Yeah, right, because there are not such system in real life, huh?
When will they do a study on the effect of playing cowboys and indians or cops and robbers on the behaviour of children?
Remeber those violent games, played by small children in the streets? The object of the game being to shoot and kill members of an ethnic minority or social class! I mean, every kid who played that must have turned into a violent psychopath gunning down everyone in sight...huh?
You can't take the sky from me...
Oh yeah, my brother just became obsessed with Tetris, and then he tried to kill me. Yeah, right. Which games lead to violence? Not all, I would certainly think! I mean, someone saying that they are imitaing a certain game when they hurt someone intentionally is a different target of blame versus that of all games. Blaming games at large is a bunch of BS. Nethack is a very violent game. (It isn't animated, though) But, you can eat people after you kill them and all sorts of stuff! And I don't think I know anyone who would go out and kill someone because they love Nethack.