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.

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[crotherm]

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 /. crowd been saying that since the first "Video Games Are Bad" report?

pseudo science

[max born]

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?

Re:Moving pictures harmful

[zulux]

I'm nervous about watching moving pictures my own self.

Me too... scares the crap out of me. All this new-fangled scrolling around in text editors and comannd shells has go to stop.

Puch-cards all the way!

Second Hand Grossmanism

[sesshomaru]

Sigh, looks like it is time once again to debunk the writings of Lt. Col. David Grossman, who is the person that Dr. Sears cites as his authority in this article. I could just point everyone to this article, Grossman-ism: Media Violence and Mad Social Science. It's a very good, scholarly article (with a lot of sarcastic wit so it isn't boring) that does a thorough job of debunking Grossman's primary assertion, that up until recently human beings have been basically psycologically unable, in the majority, to kill each other in armed conflict.

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:

Your allegations imply that deadly force is routinely employed in a manner that is the product of a conditioned response. The troubling implication is that police don't use professional judgment on a case-by-case basis..... they merely pull triggers as a matter of conditioning!

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.