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Video Games Seriously Harmful to Children?
Coltron writes "In an article published by AskDrSears.com, medical professionals go over step by detailed step why video games are so terrible for a child's developmental Health." From the article: "A green label suggests the game is suitable for all ages. Yellow or red labels signal the video may contain violence, sexual content, or bad language. While these ratings are a start, preview the 'E' or 'ALL' ratings anyway, since the level of violence the raters consider harmless may not be acceptable in your home." This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously.
to get the original article back. Ok, maybe it isn't an *exact* match, but I heard this line of tripe (including the supposed "experts") when I was a kid about playing D&D. Somehow I managed to not end up an axe murderer, as did the majority of the others. Those who did experience problems did so at a lower rate than the community at large. (26 suicides out of a population which would have expected 300 per year for its size).
That said, I still put *limits* on the games that enter this house. I have no problem with the Dynasty Warriors "hack 1000 soldiers" type games, or 3D "run and gun" games like Ratchet and Clank... because they are clearly *unrealistic*. Musou attacks and Lombaxes are pretty much fine with me.
GTA on the other hand has a story line that is much more founded in the real world. It isn't that I think that my son will *emulate* the story, per se, as much as I would prefer he not be exposed to the topics the story *covers* at his age. The same way I avoid giving him books and film covering similar topics. Emotional readiness for ideas is a real issue that gets discarded in the annoyance with the bad reputation games are being hounded with.
On the up side, this site isn't trying to censor, ban or otherwise ruin the adult's fun.
Sig under construction since 1998.
I happen to think there is some relationship between video games and the effect they have on children and their development.
I also happen to think this is a poor article, claiming "studies show", and citing not one. The best the book does is reference a title of a book by an author claiming effects, meta-citing I suppose.
If I were a concerned individual about anything and this was the reference quality handed me by one side, I'd not be swayed at all -- this borders on urban myth in its presentation ala "they say that...".
This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously.
While you may agree or disagree with the studies I think this site is right: leave it up to the parents to decide whether a game is suitable for their children. If they don't want their children to play games then fine, and that is their decision. It is not like this is being forced upon everyone.
"This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously."
What? Why shouldn't they take them seriously? Are the studies with merit, or without? If they are, it's the gaming industry that should be taking them seriously.
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So many objectionable premises here...where to start?
Eighty percent of the most popular video games feature aggressiveness or violence as the primary themes, and in twenty percent of these games the aggressiveness or violence is directed toward women.
This statement is ambiguously worded...does the author mean against women exclusively, or just against women in addition to men? If he means exclusively, I call shenanigans, and ask for a list of these games. If he means women in addition to men, couldn't this objection be contrued as sexist?
Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"...
Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^
Could these video games trigger what we call "instant replay," so that the player is conditioned to pull a trigger when seeing someone go after his girlfriend?
As has been mentioned so many times before, the person who has difficulty distinguishing the game world from the real world has much deeper problems than mere video game addiction.
We are concerned that this terrifying technology can fill a child's vulnerable and receptive brain with a whole library of scary instant replays, so that by reflex he replays one of these violent scenes when faced with a real-life problem.
I'm concerned for the child whose parents allow video games to teach them values and morals, rather than taking a more active role in their progeny's upbringing...
Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome.
Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.
Children instinctively copy adult behavior, and violent imagery is much more easily stored in the memory than less violent behavior.
This reminds me of when Bender told the TV audience, "Have you ever considered just turning off the television...sitting down with your kids...and hitting them?"
One study even reported an increase in the stress hormone adrenaline during video playing.
I'm sure it does...just as climbing a tree, jumping your dirt bike off a ramp, participating in a sporting event, or just about any other activity children might construe as 'fun'. Should we also discontinue all those activities?
These games give children an out when they don't feel in with other groups.
What the author, as well as other 'anti-game' activists, persist in denying is that the gaming community is a group that is every bit as valid as other social groups. Perhaps the author feels that gamers should stop being so antisocial, and hang out with the stoners behind the school instead....at least they'll be 'in a group' then, right?
During video-playing, children get instant gratification and can manipulate their roles to what they want. Yet, in the real world, they have to wait, and it's not always fun.
I take it the author has never so much as tried to get all the easter eggs in GTA, much less developed a character on Everquest or WoW...we'll show you the meaning of patience.
Media researchers fear that children will grow up viewing the world as violent and dangerous - a viewpoint dubbed the mean world syndrome.
Turn on CNN. Let that sink in for a couple of minutes. Then try to preach to me without choking on your own hyprocrisy.
Scary technology now allows players to "morph" headshots of other people (such as other kids or teachers whom they might hate) onto the bodies of the characters in the video game in order to shoot their heads off.
I used to have a dartboard on which I pinned pictures of people I disliked...and yet, amazingly enough, I never threw a dart at a person.
Allowing violent video games in your home could be considered as a form of child abuse. In fact, it's visual abuse.
The real 'visual abuse' was having to read this article. Thanks so much.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
This article is idiotic and impossible to read if you have the critical thinking skills more sophisticated than that of a turnip.
However (and this is the silliest thing I'll say all week):
Something about CRTs make me uncomfortable. I'll never own a television, and when I have kids I'm not even sure I want them seeing a computer monitor 'till they're three or four. I'm nervous about watching moving pictures my own self. I superstitiously believe somehow that they'll have weird effects on visual cognition in infants.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
...what if they are right?
Sure, gaming didn't hurt you. But that's a sample size of one.
Sure, it didn't hurt you or your friends... or did it, in ways that you are not aware of?
Before you fly off the handle, RTFA, check out their arguments, see if you can find any validity in their studies, think about the implications.
And then err on the side of safety. In truth, not allowing your children to play some -- or all -- video games is not harmful to them.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Funny, when I first read "just as parents learned to tame the TV," I thought it said "just as parents learned to blame the TV." I think it fits better my way.
The suggested parental guidance section was pleasent suprise. After all the really silly things like, "It's scary", they have some really down to earth suggestions for parents. They do not say that all games are bad. They know video games are here to stay. They encourage active parental monitoring. After all, haven't the
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
"It interferes with self-esteem. The most disturbing fact is that children who have the least amount of self-esteem and mastery over their life are the ones most attracted to video games. According to Dr. Jane Healy in her book Endangered Minds, boys who pursue violent video games are more likely to have low self-confidence in school and be less successful in personal relationships. Studies have also shown that for girls increased time playing video or computer games is associated with lowered self-esteem. These games give children an out when they don't feel in with other groups."
What part of that is wrong or harmful? In all honesty, when I was growing up if I didn't have games as an "out" for not fitting in with nearly every other person I knew, I wouldn't be here today.
I'm all for studies and whatnot, but when they start taking the positive aspects of gaming and turning it negative, this is even more obviously a sham to get attention for themselves.
Games just seem to be the popular, social punching bag of the day lately.
I agree, everything that is dangerous needs to be outlawed. Booze, smoking, driving, flying, sugar, chocolate, fat, salt, electricity, and gaming all have obvious detrimental effects to our mental and physical well being. Just to be on the safe side, we should probably ban fire too...
WARNING! Will Robbinson Waring! (Flail Arms)
Just looking at the higlighted titles on each paragraph it is clear that this is just to scare and cause reaction:
WARNING:
Disturbing stats.
Disturbing research
Conditions children to be violent.
Desensitizes children to violence.
It's developmentally incorrect.
it's physiologically disturbing.
It's more dangerous than TV
it's habit forming
it interferes with self-esteem
it's poor role modeling.
It's a fearful world
It's scary.
come on how many times can you print the words disturbing without looking like a tabloid? (non) they even use the word scary. This article has 1 intent to scare people with acurate statisticly numbers like most and many as well as comparing video games to other things, I can't even believe they associated it with cancer! is this some kind of sick joke?
Every two years, you hear the bullshit come out of Washington and other state capitals as our corrupt "leaders" spew forth their latest round of lies to "protect the children" in order to get re-/elected. Just who are they pandering to? Aren't the majority of gamers adults? This isn't the Atari 2600 nor NES days where they were merely children's toys. Today's expensive games require expensive PCs and expensive consoles - something that kids can't readily afford but we adults can.
I sincerely hope this all blows over and the gaming industry ratings enforcement ends up like the movie industry ratings enforcement. I cannot recall any lawsuits against movie studios for putting sex and violence in an R-rated movie.
And aren't there more pressing issues for politicians to be concerned about since we at war?
Disturbing stats? The stats themselves are only disturbing if you establish a correlation between cause and effect.
....
willingness to kill another person is not a natural behavior
We've been killing each other since the beginning of time even before video games were ever invented. Whether or not it's natural is debatable and doesn't tell us much anyway
A 1998 study showed that while playing video games children experience a high release of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, w hich could be called the hype hormone.
High levels of dopamine are common in people with obsessive comulsive disorder so it should be easy to show a correlation between OCD and violence which the author has not done so we might assume there is none.
If there's a correlation between violent crimes and video games then how come while video games are on the increase violent crime is on the decrease?
What I see as being most disturbing about this article is the premise that children are not born violent, but made that way through TV/videogames. If you have ever seen young kids, you'll realize that violence is a natural thing for them. I was shoving my brother around at the age of 4, long before I played any video games. (I don't remember doing it, but my parents do). The premise of the rest of the article is pretty silly- from what I understand, people who play videogames are actaully less likely to engage in real violence, and the rates of violence amoung children has been dropping considerably. I've always felt that if you wanted your child to grow up to be a professial thug, you should let him play football. Just look at the criminal records sported by most of the NFL.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I wasn't emotionally ready for Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan when it first came out in theaters. When it appeared that people started dying I insisted we leave the theater, and I don't think my sister one year younger was any better either. The mind control worms thing really bothered me too. They do too much talking about the emulate factor and not enough about the overwhelming the emotions factor.
...are parents that don't bother to be involved in their lives. The line that "They hide things, they lie, they don't want me to butt in, I want to be their friends so they don't hate me" is all crap. It is your job to raise your kids, to be involved. So what if they hate you; that means you are doing your job right. I hated my parents because I thought they were too strict when I was growing up. Turns out, they knew better and I thank them for it now as an Adult.
If parents spent 1/2 as much time dealing with their kids and looking into what games they are playing, what music they are listening to, who their friends are, and how they spend their "alone" time, as they did bitching about "how difficult it is to raise a child", these kins would grow up like the rest of us... only slightly screwed up!
...as compared to totally screwed up and running into a mall and shooting people
Children are not born violent, they are made violent. They become conditioned to associate violence with fun, as part of "normal life." Are we bringing up a generation of soldiers, or are we bringing up children? The end result of unmonitored video violence is we are training an army of kids.
... and I don't trust any kind of "science" which makes that as a basis for fact. This where idiotic phrases like "manchurian children" or born.
Bullshit.
Children are not all born little innocent creatures incapable of doing harm to anything
This article is making more moral judgements than scientific analysis, if this it the kind of logic they use.
Now gaming was slightly more benign back when I was young, but I grew and learned so much from games. They took me to new worlds, increased my reading abilities, built freakish hand-eye coordination, and helped my decision making and process improvement abilities.
I don't think GTA, or PGR3 will be doing much of anything for kids though... and that's sad. There aren't many games left with any real substance where they have the ability to *help* kids even if the help is secondary or tertiary to the action. We need to get back to some of those games, there's nothing wrong with twitch and just fluff games... but there needs to be some balance.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Today's expensive games require expensive PCs and expensive consoles - something that kids can't readily afford but Santa Claus can.
Fixed. Most kids don't buy consoles for themselves; they get a console as a Christmas gift.
but then so can books, movies, etc. However, what makes games more powerful on the psyche is the fact that they are interactive. In essence, you are virtually acting out whatever you have your character doing. With games that are totally away from reality, its easy to keep those ideas/actions separate. But with games that are pretty close to reality (like GTA3 and beyond), things can get a little blurry if you get to immersed. It may sound crazy, but after I first played GTA3 (it was a several hour stint at that), I had to go for a drive (to work I believe). As I was driving, I saw people walking on the sidewalk and such and started to think about running them over like in GTA3. It was funny in the game, why wouldn't it be funny to do in real life? I quickly snapped back to reality. "Oh yeah?" I thought to myself, "people would really get hurt and I would end up in jail." I also found myself being a bit more agressive while driving that day.
My point is some people (like myself and especially children) are quite sensitive to certain types of input. These are generally the same who get too freaked out from scary movies become afraid of things that do not exist (like the ghost in "The Ring"). I won't even read fiction anymore as my imagination tends to go a little too far.
So anyways, keep the violence away from the kids for as long as you can. The moment they learn how to use violence, you can never go back.
NOTHING, no government or social policy can affect the quality of life for a child if the parent(s) involved are not willing to participate in the child's life. You can't even make a law stating who and who should not be allowed to procreate. First, as for video games and developmental health, I owe my quick reflexes and good hand eye coordination to video games. I have saved my life, and the lives of others using quick wits and reflexes by avoiding an accident in a car, two concepts that video games help develop in children. The twitchy and fast gameplay that most games offer help to improve these skills, which could otherwise never be developed except playing a few types of sports. Sports are less available to children then video games, especially those that require expensive equipement or an unwilling parent to drive them to and from. I will agree that those children playing too much video games, or too much TV for that matter, could have health problems from lack of excersize and fresh air, but then, that is a parental issue, not one that a society should debate or develop laws about. Again, nothing will impact a child's heath except the impact of the parent on that child. As for violence and mental development, I will agree that there are some games that children should never play, and I question the reason for their existence even for adult sences. Again, parents should be more pro-active in observing their children and either not-allowing them to play violent games, or to recognize when a child is developing abhorrent from playing them. Many children develop and mature quicker then others, a general age policy is never approprite, only parental discression is advisable. If ANY social policy needs to be made it is one where parents should have easy access to information teaching them how to become more effective parents. They shouldn't have to run out and buy Dr. Phil books or videos, the governement should be able to offer free programs and literature that can help a parent deal with a kid that doesn't want to go out an play, at least help the parents grow a brass pair to be able to handle a beligerent childen that won't listen to them when they say enough video games is enough. Wasting time and money debating policy about video games is just that, a waste of time and money. The US in particular is so fearful of social programs, its considered Un-American for the government to step in an educate the population into how to be better parents, yet it is very american to create meaningless laws that prevent a child from buying a mature rated video game. Kids are going to get that game for their birthday or for Christmas because their parents will get it for them without even considering reading the warning label. I am tired of hearing this debate, and hearing about parents wanting to sue the gaming industry because their fat kid has heart problems because of inactivity caused by long and excessive video game play. Parents need to accept their right and responsibilities to raise their kids properly, not use video games and its industry as a scapegoat for bad parenting.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I played Doom, read porn, watched violent anime, listed to vulgar heavy metal (alternative I suppose is the better term for the mid 90's) music when I was an early teen. Hell... One of my earlier memories as a child before I was a teen was watching Scar Face.
As a late 20 something, I turned out fairly well adjusted especially towards the opposite sex and successful career compared to many people who were sheltered growing up.
From personal experience, I don't think any of the above have a negative affect on young teens at all... Perhaps it is a needed experience to grow up to as an outlet towards teen frustrations. I think my experience with darker things led me to be more educated about sex, drugs, and violence in the real world or at least know how to seperate fantasy from reality.
You know the more I think about it, if I wasn't playing video games or being anti-social on the computer, I might have been actually doing drugs and having sex as a kid resulting in teen pregnacy because I didn't have anything else better to do. Makes me look like a looser then, but now I have no regrets now since my life turned out pretty good.
To sum it up, kids needs an emotional outlet. Let them have it or they will find their own.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My girlfriend is currently in medical school, and mentioned having been told that surgeons who play video games, especially just prior to surgery, actually make fewer mistakes during operations.
Wired had a story which provides some information about it.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The assumption when I read the title is that the article will be the standard list of issues why video games, in excess, are actually bad for you: Lack of exercise, less socializing with peers, eye-strain.
Instead we are treated to sanctimonious FUD, attempting to scare parents.
The article presumes that my children are some sort of zombie-like sponges of inappropriate material, absorbing every indecency they observe. This tunnel vision moralizing fails to address that children have to possess a well-developed sense of reality taught to them by adults. There are many horrible, shocking, and misleading things in life. You teach your child to analyze and understand where fantasy ends and reality begins. That way a child can differentiate between a violent videogame, which is entertainment, and real horrors, like war, that is anything but.
How was raising kids to play hunt the indian, kill the communist, and shoot the robber any better? I did not see the great moral outcry against such activity written across the pages of history. The fact is, the video game industry, like all entertainment industries, makes a great target for those power-hungry, attention-seeking blowhards of our day. And there is always a steady supply of people that are looking for something to blame rather than take responsibility to proactively encourage discerning thought.
However, I already pointed to this in a previous comment on yet another article on the coming ban on 'M' rated games. (I really don't know how long it will take, but I believe it is coming so be prepared for it.)
So, in the interest in presenting new research on the subject of this impressive charlatan, I present this, The Dave Grossman Debate. The author tends to use emotional rhetoric too much but is understandably upset by the implications of Grossman's writing, which is that police officers and military personel are being turned into homicidal zombie killbots by the new 'murder simulators' that also happen to be the basis of the evil videogames that are poisoning our children:
Even though the rhetoric is a little emotional for my taste (I prefer the dryer sarcastic wit of the other article) this article is dense with statistical and historical information debunking Grossman.Of course, none of this is going to matter to the believers.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I can't believe you guys dignified this article by linking to it.. There are a total of 0 citations for their supposed facts..
dont humour him, stop linking to this stupid articles where parents are trying to assign blame for their shitty parenting. It's not the game that makes them violent, its the kids that are violent in the first place, who then seek out the game, and then some moron says that since little jimmy killed someone , then played gta, then killed another person , completely ignoring the first killing, that its the game's fault
"Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"..."
Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^
"Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome."
Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.
Agreed, but could the crackpot be delivering a non-crackpot message? In ROTC in the early 80s they showed us a Marine Corp training film. It was color footage of the Marine assault on Tarawa in 1943, combat cameramen were with the assault troops. The easiest way to describe what was depicted is probably to refer to the opening Normandy landing scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan, there were some similarities. One vivid recollection that I have of this training film is a bloody shell crater with the upper half of a Marine's corpse in it. Another Marine comes running by, rolls the torso out of the crater and them lays in the bloody crater himself. I guess "cover" was at a premium. The instructor told us that the purpose of this film was to expose us to the brutality of combat, to desensitize us to some degree. We were told that you cannot be completely prepared, but that all the Marine Corp was really hoping for is that we freeze in shock and horror for five seconds instead of ten. So the military does in fact believe that visual exposure to violence does desensitize to some degree. If so, it is not a stretch to believe that violence depicted in video games can provide desensitization as well. Hell, the interactive and participatory nature of video games may make it more effective than passively watching a film.
In any case, desensitization does not mean someone will turn into a maniac. The people that go postal were "defective" to begin with.
What people here seem to have an objection to is a sense of misdirected hysterical alarmism. Video games have become a scapegoat, especially since they represent a real disconnect between generations.
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I agree with you to a degree but I believe there is also a hysterical counterreaction by the gamers who feel their beloved games are being attacked. They reject an offensive idea that may actually, inadvertantly, contain a nugget of truth. In truth I believe there is some desensitization to violence, see the link below. Does it turn a normal person into a maniac? No. Were people who have gone postal defective to begin with? Yes.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169991&
In my last comment I wrote about how although I enjoy the Sims franchise, I understood many might possibly find it boring because of the lack of violence.
If the gaming industry wants to improve its' image, the primary thing it needs to do is develop more games that are not based on the premise of violent conflict. I'm not saying that violent games necessarily are or are not harmful to kids, but no amount of arguing on its own is going to convince the Jack Thompsons of the world.
There need to be more games that are like the Sims in terms of having little or no conflict, or like Black and White in the sense that although conflict is possible, in-game rewards exist for following a non-aggressive path. If we can produce a lot more of these, instead of them seeming like one or two-off novelty projects, it's possible that people who genuinely don't want to play violent games will feel like they have a real supply of alternatives.
Just go get the gay cancer already and die. We need less dorks using those gay ass emoticons in the world.
"twenty percent of these games the aggressiveness or violence is directed toward women." huh?, what games?
Super Wife Beaters?
Am no fek Buddhist, but this is enlightenment.
I'm sorry. I know they did a "study" on this, but I've found that my self-esteem has increased dramatically since I started playing video games. Games offer us the opportunity to experiment and learn without major physical or social consequences. For kids that are used to losing at games like soccer or losing face when dealing with others, a video game can really heal a bruised ego. On the other hand, I grew up in a suburban bubble where success and failure had virtually the same results. This led to depression and ultrasensitivity to very minor differences in peoples behavior. Video games can give you a more accurate sense of what constitutes failure or success, thereby negating this effect.
Yeah, I know I'm just making shit up based on anectodal evidence, but its as good as what the article offers. Maybe I should start an institute.
Wow you two parents who have claimed how this article has NO reference or citation are two HUGE douchebags. Yes, get use to insults like this. I'm sure you'll find this "totally immature" and "very rude" but you can suck it, because your ignorance is fucking annoying. And I REALLY don't care to change the vocabulary on this matter, I'll say the "4 letter words" that you so despise just for the hell of it. Get a clue, this is the real world.
Blame video games, you're such fucking fags. Yeah I play video games all the time(I'm sure you're going to be like "oh see hes violent he said bad words, I'm a pacifist and I don't like video games boo hoo") but I don't go around and be like "hmmm I dont like that person lets kill him/her." Fucking shit, I hate it when people/friends step on BUGS. I can't stand animal cruelty, yet according to many of you, since I play such violent games I'm probably the heart of all violence. Know what? Fuck you. Fuck yourself and your ideas. You know what fucking desensitized me? Have you ever seen "Saving Private Ryan?" Great movie, by the way, but it's a pretty fucking powerful one. Just go ahead and watch the beginning scene. Watch hundreds of soliders get fucking annihilated by MG-42's. You'll see soliders being blown apart by morters or see flamethrowers clearing an entire bunker. Just go ahead and see what that does to you. Or you can watch "Braveheart" and see William Wallace slit a man's throat for killing his wife. It's really quite graphic and makes your stomach queazy when you first see it. You'll realize how fucking sick this world can be, yet you want to blame it on VIRTUAL VIOLENCE. I mean, FUCK, COME ON GET A FUCKING GRIP.
I have one last thing to say for all you video-game-hater-douchebags; you're fucking stupid.