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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.
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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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
OK, then let's talk about a larger sample size...let's say: the entire United States of America. Violent crime is at a record low in this country. The most recent generation to reach adulthood is the generation that grew up owning Atari 2600's, Colecovision, Nintento, Commodore 64's, and PC's. These were all significant gaming platforms, which all had violent titles available for them. Also consider that these are victimization rates of people above 12 years old -- so we can also include the grand poobah of contraversial titles, Grand Theft Auto. How do you correlate the steep decline in violent crime with the dawn of video gaming? If the anti-gaming studies actually warrant concern, shouldn't we be able to find correlations between violent video games and an increase in violent crime (and not just an increase in news stories about violent crime)?
I read the article...and their conclusions were largely bullshit, and can be easily picked apart. Tripmaster Monkey has already done a good job of debunking the claims in the article, so I won't re-hash his well-worded argument. I do, however, have a problem with one of your contentions. Backing up a bogus claim with horrendous implications does not make the claim more valid. Think about these two statements (both false): "Chocolate causes acne." "Chocolate causes heart disease, as well as serious developmental disabilities in children". They are both patently false, but one has more serious implications. We know that it won't harm children too not eat chocolate, but does the latter claim make you more likely to prohibit your children from eating chocolate?
Using your logic, by making bogus claims with severe implications and using a so-called expert to back them up, you can be easily coerced into changing your behavior in just about any way. If you disagree, perhaps you should revisit your previous logic.
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. Referencing recent studies on violent crime (and even property crimes) the "problem" isn't even demonstrable. It would be easier to draw parallels between arguments against video games and arguments against rock 'n roll decaying our nation's moral fiber. In actually...the kids are alright. It appears that the parents the ones who are screwed up here.
-Turkey
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.
If you've raised children, you realize that a lot of stuff doesn't come built in at all. They don't know not to stick their fingers on the stove. They don't know that when they hit, kick and bite that they will get punished at the very least by losing friends.
It's not exactly true that chilren are "born violent" any more than they are born thinking flames are OK to touch. It's more that part of learning the consequences of their actions are a normal part of growing up. Learning the hitting and biting have bad conseqences is like learning that when you stand on the edge of a coffee table, it will tip over and you'll get hurt.
Another thing raising actual children will teach you is that people are born disriminators. Your hear a lot of stuff like this: You said I shouldn't hit my sister with a bat; you never mentioned hockey sticks.
Combining these two observations, I'd say that it's worth being concerned about video game violence on very young children, but not overly so. Most children get plenty of feedback about the inappropriateness of violence, and most are quite capable in my opinion of discriminating between video game violence and real life violence. There may be exceptions of course. I'd be more concerned about fanatasy elements in games that are not offset with real life learning experiences. Suburban kids growing up playing Grand Theft Auto might for example learn to think of cities as being more dangerous than they actually are. Or they might get an overly romantic view of war by playing war games.
I think it's important to know what your kids are playing or watching on TV, and to use that as an occasion to talk to them about things that presented in their entertainment. When you don't think something is appropriate, or you even just feel uncomfortable, there's nothing wrong with saying no. You can say, "I don't like that game because I don't like seeing people blown up." And if Johnny doesn't think it's fair, he can add it to the list of things you did to screw up his childhood.
In the end my biggest concern about games are opportunity costs. It's too easy to spend all your time at them, instead of the other activities they could be doing like playing outside with their friends.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.)