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."

Comments

Denial

[Fished]

As an observation, it seems to me that many on Slashdot are in flat-out denial of the effects of playing video games on children. Again and again, Slashdot has posted results showing that video games do predispose kids to violent behavior. Yet, when these stories are posted, they are always accompanied with faint hints that they are not to be believed. In this case, it is only "claimed" that video games dispose kids to violence - not "shown" or "suggested".

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.

Re:Denial

[joFFeman]

indeed. the argument needs to stop being made that 'violent video games don't influence children', and the arguments for increased, positive parental involvement, and the formation of a society which itself doesn't reward violence need to be made.

Re:Denial

[Methuseus]

Ok, I've been playing violent games since I was 6. I'm not and never have been a violent person. I still play violent games, and am a nice, happy guy when I'm not playing games.

Are you saying that I'm a figment of my imagination? Or do you think I'm lying? Just curious.

Re:Denial

[pompousjerk]

So why are they allowed to play? Why are they allowed into 'R' rated movies?

More importantly, do violient games make violent kids or do violent kids play violent games? A correlation does not prove cause and effect (although I haven't read the article yet to look at how the study was done... I'll save my conclusions for later...)

Re:Denial

[Ieshan]

No, he's saying you're an N of 1.

In most clinical drug trials, the drug doesn't affect everyone. You happen to be someone who hasn't had a physical reaction to doing something you've been doing for quite some time.

In fact, since the number of murders in Japan is relatively low, if we use murdering someone as the standard for influence, than videogames probably have little to no effect on this statistic, and you'd be right.

But we're not. The psychologists who measure violent tendancies after exposure to violent video-games use scales and measurements that probably have little to do with actual life experiences. Fill in the blank questionaires. Analyses of thousands of juveniles for a small statistical trend.

Claiming that your actions are in no way influenced by your choice entertainment is just as absurd as saying that videogames turn people into mindless killing zombies. The research clearly shows a pattern that videogames affect children much as other violent entertainment does - by desensitizing them to other violent episodes and by predisposing them to aggressive means of solving problems.

You're not a figment of your imagination, you're an N of 1. Don't assume that the world's scientific findings neccessarily apply to you. In most cases, findings are proven to be statistically significant, not scientific law.

Re:Denial

[Danse]

The only problem is that there is a very distinct difference between real life violence and video game violence. A lot of people grow up playing violent games and have no problem at all. Indeed the vast majority of gamers are pretty well adjusted. But because some small fraction of people can't tell reality from fantasy, they try to tar the whole industry. Face it, if these kids are so messed up that they think that the things you do in video games can be done in reality, then they're going to do something stupid anyway. Maybe they'll get it from a movie, or a book, or a comic book, who knows. But it's not the medium that is the problem, it's the kids and the way they're raised, and possibly a medical condition as well.

Re:Denial

[bigbigbison]

I've posted on this issue before. Basically my point is not that videogmaes are or are not violent. It is that there are a lot of other things that go on in western society that seem much more violent but yet aren't considered violent because they are older forms of entertainment.

This issue of violence gets to a deeper issue. What is a violent videogame? Would you consider Madden 2002 to be a violent game? How about NHL 2K3? In all likelihood, Madden 2002 would not be considered "violent." Why? Because it is "just football." In American society (and probably in much of western society as well, although I am no expert on international culture), sports are naturalized. We consider them harmless. Even more than that, we encourage children to participate in them saying that they will be moral builders and the like. However, let us stop a moment and think about what actually happens during a contact, "masculine" sport like football (both kinds), basketball or hockey. How do players hype themselves up for the game, how to they refer to their opponents? "Let's kill 'em! Let's rip their heads off! Let's destroy them!"

So here we have an activity that involves actual real violence, hitting one another and face to face trash talking and yet we do not seem concerned that this will lead to other acts of violence? But we have these mediated, virtual enactments and we are concerned? Real violence does not cause more violence, but virtual violence does? The worst injury I have ever heard of at a LAN party is carpal tunnel! How often do fights break out at LAN parties? How often do they break out at sporting events? Remind me again which one of these causes violence?

This is not to suggest that sports are bad. Not at all. It is to show a point. Sports are considered part of our society. They have been since ancient times. So the thought that these may cause violence does not even occur to most people. However, these damn kids and their videogames. Now that is another story. Videogames are a new medium and they are a new entrant into our culture. Hence the moral panic surrounding them. Remember what rap was supposed to do to our kids? Remember what heavy metal was supposed to do? Remember rock and roll? There have been moral panics about technology dating all the way back to the popularization of the printing press. What is going on here is nothing different and as such we should try to see through the moralistic, "what about the children!?!" hype and see that the real issues here are not "do videogames make people violent?" but "Who decides what 'violent' is?" and "Why is that considered violent when there are so many other things in society that aren't?"

I will feel safe in admitting that videogmaes MIGHT make SOME kids POSSIBLY more violent when the media and anti-videogame zealots admit that physically agressive sports MIGHT make SOME kids POSSIBLY more violent. After all, I don't know about anyone else, but when I was in high school it wasn't the gamers that were beating up other kids it was the athletes.

Re:Denial

[Stargoat]

Nonsense. Pure and utter nonsense.

This study of Japanese children by a Japanese woman, Ms. Nobuko Ihori. They asked children questions about violence. The children who played the most (the top five percent or higher? It doesn't say) respond to the study in such a manner that it has been interpreted that these children who play the most video games are the most violent.

But wait, this doesn't make sense? The difference in verbal agressiveness was not clear?

So, children who play the most amount of video games are likely to be the most agressive physically, but they won't swear at you any more than the next person?

Nonsense. I can think of several different, and equally valid interpretations of the data:

1. The children that were most likely to respond honestly were the children who spent the most amount of time playing video games.
2. Or the children who spent the most amount of time playing video games are the ones who concentrate best, and thus are the most likely to be irriated at interruptions.
3. Or, children who have been allowed to play several hours of video games a day have their family completely cowed, and have been known to use violence to get their way previously.
4. Or, perhaps the children who play the most video games are the ones (for a variety of reasons) who are most osterized at school, and they are the ones most likely to be violent.

This is a case of Ms. Nobuko Ihori jumping to conclusions when getting some research. She needs to come up with different conclusions, test those out against the idea of children playing videos games, and then come back to us. Instead, the little grad student wanted to make a name for herself and published a study condemning video game violence.

The context...

[PaleZer0]

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.

Correlation != Causation

[Joe the Lesser]

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.

Yes, but...

[Fished]

Let's put it this way: you have two choices:

1. Excessively violent games make kid's violent, so should be banned.
2. 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?

Re:Cause or effect?

[FFFish]

Oh, lordy. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, Quantumprof.

The researchers grab a random sample of kids and randomly divide them in two groups. One group is assigned non-violent games, the other violent games. They do not assign the violent kids to the violent games. That would be stupid: it would invalidate the study.

The kids play the games and are then engaged in group play. The researchers observe the interactions between the kids. They observe the kids who had been playing violent games -- and remember, these were just kids at random -- tend to be more physically aggressive.

Study after study is showing this. And the results fit in perfectly with what we already know about kids: they learn by observing and doing.

Why on earth would you wish to pretend otherwise?

Violence and Media

[neostorm]

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.

Points to reward violent behaviour

[Scrameustache]

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?