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Videogame Mythbusting
AsiNisiMasa writes "MIT professor Henry Jenkins has an essay over at pbs.org that debunks eight common myths about videogames. It covers not only the topic of violence, but gender and expression as well. This is what happens when reasonable people with an education tackle the subject objectively." From the article: "1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence. - According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers -- 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play."
Do not! >: O
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
From the article: "Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic."
When I read this, I couldn't help but smile at how right the article author is... why? because of a story my mom told me:
Way back in the day -- before videogames ever existed -- and my mom was a little girl, her mother volunteered to let her (my mom) be a subject in a study on child behavior. So, my mom is placed in a room with all sorts of toys. One thing that catches her eye though, is a clown bop-bag... you know, the inflatable punching bags that are weighted to stand back up after you knock them over. My mom had played with dolls and kitchen sets and many of the other toys at home, but she had never seen one of these punching bags, and she was fascinated. She poked it, and it wobbled. She hit it, and it tipped, but stood back up. So, being a curious child, she hit harder and harder, trying to see if she could make it stay down. The researchers were horrified at the "violent behavior" that this girl was showing... Surely, she must have deep psychological issues, intense hatred of clowns, or must have been brought up wrong. But no, as my mom distinctly remembers, it was simply curiosity in testing the limits of a new toy. She has since grown up and had no psychological problems or aggressive tendancies at all, despite the fears of the "researchers."
Anyway, I think that many parallels could be drawn between this story and the points made by the article author. Particularly that trying to make conclusions on what a child will become or policies to govern her based on a few minutes of observation is at best flawed, and at worst, more detrimental to society than the unsupervised child would ever be.
TFA brought up an excellent point, and one that I think bears repeating to those that think video games can "bleed" into real world behavior. All mammals distinguish between play and actual violence. TFA mentions primates, but I don't know about primates, so I'll talk about kittens.
Kittens fight. They kick and bite each other, pounce and paw with this wild look in their eyes. It looks like they're trying to kill each other, but this is how kittens play. They intentionally avoid injuring each other, and they have signs to tell the other kittens to stop if they actually get hurt. Yes, this play simulates a real catfight, as that's exactly what it's meant to prepare them for. Yet a kitten knows the difference between play fighting and real conflict.
Some people see kittens fighting, and instinctively jump in to stop them because they might hurt each other. Even more so because they're kittens - supposedly soft and sweet and helpless. I've seen humans peg the kitten who initiates play as "bad" because he is "bullying" the other kittens. Most people don't understand that the kittens are just playing.
I guess my point is, if a cat, an animal with a brain the size of a lemon, can figure out the difference between play and real, surely our own children can. We could at least give them that much benefit of the doubt.