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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.
"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 can remember the instant I became desensitized to violence. It was the scene in Robocop where the lead character is getting shot all to shit in the warehouse pre-transformation.
I was pretty advanced for a kid my age, so my parents had allowed me monitored access to media considered generally inappropriate for my age group. I usually ingested it just fine. I was really into sci-fi and was looking forward to seeing a movie about an ass kicking robot.
I nearly cried during that scene because I couldn't determine if that could happen without you passing out or dying. All the other violent scenes I had witnessed resulted in very quick deaths. The idea that the pain and damage could add up like that was a little too much.
Background: My degree is in Comp. Sci, and I took a handful of Psych classes. So no, I'm not an expert.
However, if you go and look up the developmental stages of the human being, which are increasingly well documented, I do not find fears that computers may have odd effects a silly one.
Children are not little adults. This is all the more true for toddlers, and even more true for babies. While it is true that there are some things that there is evidence that babies believe/know that are surprisingly sophisticated moral judgements (such as who hit who, and which end of that relationship is scary, at a very young age), it is also true that babies have to learn things like "if you pour all the liquid from one glass into another glass of a different shape, you have the same amount of liquid."
Babies are effectively aliens, if you haven't carefully studied them, and your internal cognition models of other normal adult humans do not apply to them very much, if at all.
I am concerned that during these formative early years (let's call it 0-3 for concreteness), excessive electronic interference could be legitimately damaging on a number of cognitive levels. I could also be wrong. Studying this topic would be very difficult to do ethically.
Of particular concern to me is the learning of the value of effort; I am concerned that a young child given very normal electronic toys that produce entire songs at the press of a button are teaching that miniscule amounts of effort can "produce" that much result. I'd much rather see a kid play with physical toys (like blocks, legos, etc, as age-appropriate) that have a much more normal effort/effect reward.
I think that there's little danger in "playing it safe"; I am concerned without proof about these things, but I do have existential evidence that not being exposed to such things at 0-3 does not result in a adult incapable of understanding electronics. As such, should I ever become a parent one of my plans is to ban any such toys for the first few years in favor of more classic, physical toys, from which one can learn about the physical world much more effectively. (Lest I sound like a Nazi, my kids would probably end up with a computer at the same time as anyone else's; remember, I'm talking 0-3-ish here.)
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.
I have absolutely no problem with shooting someone's head off in GTA, and I got a kick from watching a disembodied eyeball sprite roll down my screen after I blew someone into a thousand gibs in Rise Of The Triad (it was just so silly!). And yet, I can't sit through a documentary on reconstructive surgery without the urge to vomit, simply from the sight of bloody bone and tissue. I am uncomfortable viewing photographs and movies of people being shot, maimed, or otherwise injured, yet it doesn't bother me when someone dies violently in a Hollywood movie. I don't even get into fist-fights in real life, let alone shoot innocent people, but I do it all the time in video games.
The difference? Video games and Hollywood movies are fake, and I know that they are fake. Nobody is actually being hurt. So, I guess you can say I'm desensitized to fake violence. Doctors and military personel, though... they are desensitized to REAL violence/disfigurement/injury. If, as the pundits argue, being desensitized to violence makes you a danger to society, why do we let doctors handle scapels, and actually give automatic rifles to the military?
Clearly, there's more to the story than just being "desensitized." For one thing, the person has to have a desire to cause violence in the first place. They also have to have enough of a lack of empathy (or the ability to divorce empathy from your actions) to be "okay" about hurting someone. When a doctor cuts into you to, say, perform heart surgery, he's not trying to hurt you, he's doing the opposite. And, let me tell you, empathy goes right out the door when the person you're supposed to feel empathy towards is trying to kill you.
Frankly, if the pundits want an arguement against "violent" video games, they should be arguing about the games that don't have blood and gore. For example, I can stab someone through the stomach with a sword in Soul Calibur, but they don't bleed; in fact, an injury which would be fatal in real life won't even make the victim bend over in pain, they just get back up and keep fighting. (Since TFA mentioned 20% of the violent games having "aggressiveness or violence... directed toward women," I'll offer Soul Calibur as an example on their behalf. But in all fairness, those women are trying to kick my ass, too, so it's mutual.)
It is certainly possible that being interactive could make video games more effective than movies at desensitizing people to fake violence. If somebody invented a video game where you can interactively kill real people, I would be entirely against it. (Wanna play a round of Ender's Game, anyone?)
But saying that video games desensitize kids to actual violence doesn't match the evidence that I've observed in my own life. And, frankly, my own observations are far more "scientific" and "credible" than anything they mention in the article. (Playing an intense video game raises adrenaline levels, increases blood pressure, and causes rapid breathing? How horrible, the children are in danger! But then... so does a really intense championship game of chess, or competing in a spelling bee, or reading a scary story... not to mention getting off your duff and doing some excercise. Hell, my pulse has gone up a little bit just from being so focused on tearing down this stupid article.)
P.S. AVIDS (Acquired Violence Immune Deficiency Syndrom) is even stupider than "killologist;" at least killologist means what it's supposed to mean (someone who studies, uh, killing people?). If the kids are acquiring a deficiency in their "immunity" to viole