Games Lead To Violence and Drugs?

A joint University of California, SFO/University of Pittsburgh study has been released which finds "playing violent videogames can lead young men to believe it is acceptable to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol", Gamasutra reports. Reuters is also carrying the story, with some information about methodology available in that piece. From the article: "Brady and Matthews had a group of 100 male undergraduates aged 18 to 21 play either Grand Theft Auto III or The Simpsons: Hit and Run. In the Simpsons game, players took the role of Homer Simpson and their task was to deliver daughter Lisa's science project to school before it could be marked late. In Grand Theft Auto III, players took the role of a criminal, and were instructed by the Mafia to beat up a drug dealer with a baseball bat."

Comments

Re:Other way around?

[diamondmagic]

If you bothered to read the article at all, you would know that this was not an observational study, but a scientific study in which the subjects were required to play a randomly selected game. GTA resulted in the worse-off outcome. That's it, that is all there is.

Yeah, just like....

[netfool]

...comic books, the Waltz (no kidding, look it up!) and Rock & Roll.

Re:Mark article "redundant"

[Southpaw018]

There was a Wired article on this a couple days ago. Choice quote:

Comic Books "Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children ... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!" - Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954

I think that about covers the legitimacy of this study.