GTA Played By More Than 70 Percent Of Teens

cdneng2 writes "This Yahoo!/Reuters article indicates that more than 70 percent of American kids have played Grand Theft Auto. The study also indicates that those who played are more likely to be in fights. It's a good thing the authors cautioned that this study did not prove a link between game violence and real-life behavior." The Gallup poll editors specifically and sensibly advised: "The data can't demonstrate causality - boys who are more prone to fighting may simply be more attracted to violent video games."

Comments

well at 70 percent...

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

If 70 percent of kids are likely to fight, then we should be looking closely at the 30 percent of wierdos who don't want to fight, yes? Isn't that the way it works?

Makes sense

[green.vervet]

This explains the sharp rise in carjackings, gun rampages, and drownings in shallow water we've seen recently.

Studies show

[Palshife]

Studies also show that people play GTA because it's a good game.

Ass kicking is ass kicking. Your chances of beating the crap out of someone are the same if you lose at chess.

Re:punk kids

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate when adults assume to know what i am thinking. It really bothers me when some egghead who has never gotten any tail or lived when he was a teen can tell me how I think and feel.

I hate it when some punk-ass kid assumes he knows what an adult's frame of reference is. You're making assumptions that:
1) they're eggheads
2) they haven't gotten any tail
3) they didn't "live" when a teen

Gee, maybe you're right. You are the very first generation whose elders "just can't understand what it's like to be a kid these days". Aren't you special and unique in this universe. All of history served no other purpose than to prepare the way for your coming.

Stop thinking you are so special and start to realize that yes, you do fall into a demographic, you do fit into trends, and you are a tool. Then you might be able to do some really original thinking.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

[I am Kobayashi]

The survey found that 34 percent of boys who admitted to being in a physical fight over the last year have played "GTA," while 17 percent who were in a fight have not played the game.

Shouldn't this number add up to 100? Of all the boys who admitted being in a fight, aren't the only two possibilities that they either (1) have played GTA, or (2) have not?
I am sure I am missing something....

Twisting Statistics

[robbway]

Excerpt: Although the study showed twice as many boys who had played the criminal adventure game reported having been in a fight in the last year, the survey's authors cautioned that did not prove a link between game violence and real-life behavior.

Later on, the article does paraphrase that this does not show causality. However, a lot of care is always required in interpreting statistics.

If I gave a sample group peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but didn't put jelly on 30% of the sandwiches, I'd have 70% PB&J, and 30% PB. Now, if I were to randomly select one person out of the group, observe his sandwich, then put him back into group, and repeat, the number of PB&J's would be about 70% and PB's would be 30%. Guess what? The probability I'll select a person with a PB&J is more than twice that of a PB.

The important thing to realize is that the violent behavior displayed by the teens that play GTA is not statistically different than random chance. If they took a lot of samples, it's actually less, being 2-to-1 more likely (67% probable) instead of 7-to-3 more likely (70% probable).

Re:Twisting Statistics

[tessaiga]

You make an excellent point, although it took me a couple of reads to figure out what your analogy was trying to say. (Mostly because the numbers in your post appear to come out of nowhere, and I didn't figure out where you were getting them until I went through the exercise myself.) Perhaps a clearer way of putting it would be:

The survey found that 34 percent of boys who admitted to being in a physical fight over the last year have played "GTA," while 17 percent who were in a fight have not played the game.

34% of boys in fights played GTA, 17% did not. This makes a total of 51%. (By the way, where did the other 49% go?)

That means that of their subset (boys who got into fights), 34/51 = 67% played GTA.

The Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing found in an online survey of 517 teenagers aged 13 to 17 conducted in August that 71 percent of boys in that age group have played "GTA," along with 34 percent of girls.

Of the total group (i.e. all boys surveyed), 71% had played GTA.

Comparing the two statistics (67% vs 71%), and given that their margin of error was 5%, we can conclude that the group of violent boys did not show a statistically different tendency towards playing GTA.

I wonder if the news story didn't misquote some of the statistics in the Gallup poll, because as written this doesn't make a lot of sense. (Not to mention the fact that boys in fights who played GTA + those that didn't should = 100%, but it doesn't.) My guess is that the newshound that churned out this story was probably an arts major who didn't pay close enough attention to the details of the poll and made a small typo or two somewhere in reporting the results.

NEWS FLASH!

[g-san]

Violent Television is watched by more than 95% of everyone.

Oh boy.

[NanoGator]

These stories are starting to irritate me. I might be able to jump on this GTA causes violence bandwagon if not for a few things:

1.) Where's the increase in violence? Why aren't we seeing a flood of copycats?

2.) The show Jackass has had a couple of copycats. If kids are so weak willed that TV tells them what to do, how come there weren't millions of Jackass'esque attempts?

3.) How come advertising isn't a much stronger tool? If it's so easy to control kids minds, then why aren't commercials causing big headaches for society?

4.) Why has it been so freaking hard to find a link? It's hard to imagine that there's any children in the USA that don't have access to a TV, yet despite 40 years of exposure, they're still chasing this one. I wouldn't mind if this research was being used to find ways to improve child education through TV/Games, but instead it's being used to hang it. WTF?

5.) Why aren't we seeing studies that look at well balanced adults that grew up on games? My generation had Mortal Kombat, and that created quite a controversy. That game was blamed for all that's wrong with the world, but now that that generation is in their mid 20's, how come nobody's looking at them and saying "strange, lots of these people went on to be successful."?

If you want to prove to me that GTA or any other scapegoat game is causing harm to our kids, then you've got quite a bit to discuss with me first.