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Video Games Linked To Child Aggression
the4thdimension writes "CNN is running a story this morning that explains new research showing a correlation between video games and aggression in children. The study monitored groups of US and Japanese children, asking them to rate their violent behavior over a period of several months while they played video games in their free time. The study concludes that it has 'pretty good evidence' that there is a link between video games and childhood aggression." Stories like this make me want to smash things.
What's wrong with parents these days?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
...so that I don't have to be violet physically. Nothing like Pantera after a long day. However, Pantera is _passive_ aggression. Video games are _active_ aggression, and that's why I stopped playing them at about age 12 or so. If a 12 year old could identify that video games were making him (me) aggressive, what is the story here?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I don't get why they keep beating this horse...
I played violent games all my life, I haven't killed or hurt anyone.
I will agree that sure if that's all kids see and they don't get any parental direction, then sure.
Kids do copy what they see, but a 6 year old kid shouldn't be playing GTA 3. Then again it depends on the kid.
It's just not something you can put to statistics.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
But all video games can bring out the worst in me.. even playing monopoly online :). When someone routinely lands on the luxury tax square instead of my hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place.. I start dropping F-bombs like they are going out of style! I've been known to throw a pen accross the room also...
;)
Maybe I should seek help
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
So the only aggression I have is this unexplainable urge to jump on people's heads and punch bricks.
As a parent of a five year-old and a nearly ten year-old, I find that a lack of activity and too-quick transitions tend to lead to aggression. When my son has been playing video games for longer than normal and we immediately yank him off, it causes frustration and acting out. If he's been active that day and we give him warnings that his time is coming to an end, things seem to go more smoothly.
Good parenting is more than a series of yes/no decisions.
Video games are violent, per the majority. For most, the point of a game is to kill other people. I'm an avid game player of Xbox and Wii, and my four year old has his games that he plays (Simpsons, The Bee Movie game, Kung Fu Panda). Last year we noticed that when I was playing Zelda on the Wii, he loved to mimic my actions. He started collecting "swords" and "shields" out of anything at hand and would play fight. Every now and then we watched me play Lost Odyssey, where the characters run up to the mob, attack, and run back (and that's how he named the game - "the one where you run up and hit the bad guy and run back"). When I fought, he would orchestrate himself fighting our chair with a sword.
Even when the game is over and unplayed for months, he would still act out those movements. Is he aggressive? He's a child, and he does have aggressive tendencies like all other boys. The point of this article: can it be pinned on the games? I doubt it. Just as young boys are attracted to guns, army guys, and fighting, he is attracted to games that have him fighting people - even if it's just jumping on their heads.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, IMO.
Then again, I think there are many parents out there who expect their kids to be little adults. They want them to shut up, sit down, be quiet, and follow strict rules. And, when the kids act like kids, the parents stretch for something to blame for them being "unruly". When ritalin isn't helping, let's blame the video games. IMO
The results are consistent with my own experience. When my older son was younger, I provided him with access to an NES emulator so that he could play the old Nintendo games I had sitting in the closet. (I was missing cabling and didn't find them until later.) What we noticed is that if he was allowed to play video games for too long, he became a) lazy about doing anything else and b) very temperamental and difficult to deal with.
About that time my wife instituted a time-limit for games each day that my son could spend at any time during the day. when he wasn't playing games, he was required to find some other activity to do. (e.g. play with Duplos, ask to go to the park, etc.) This change was very effective in smoothing out his behavior.
The problem does not appear to be the violence in video games as Mr. Thompson, no longer esquire, would have you believe. The problem appears to be that playing games for a long period of time results in a lot of pent-up energy. That energy is tempered by a reduced desire to perform any task besides play video games. In result, the energy ends up expended via a behavior route.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We have too many "electronic baby sitters." It is precisely a lack of authority and discipline that leads to problems such as these. When kids know their place and behave accordingly, they are generally happier, healthier and a lot more well adjusted.
Let the kids play video games... as long as the parents play WITH them! People said the same thing about television. The real problem is lack of parental participation that drives children wild.
Video games do not make people violent. On the contrary, I find video games to be a good way to wind down after a good killing spree. Video games train you to concentrate on a single task for a long period of time, which is an invaluable skill when you have to bury the bodies deep enough to evade those pesky corpse-sniffing dogs.
I find that far from being more aggressive, video games have made me more focused. Before, I was so aggressive I would get sloppy in my work, and often leave incriminating evidence behind. Now, with the help of video games, I can calmly clean up the scene, making sure not so much as a stray hair is left. This has made me so difficult to track that I can send off taunting letters to police secure in the knowledge that they'll never find me. Thanks, video games!
I'm not a psychologist but it seems to me there isn't anyone I know, adult or child, that doesn't get frustrated when interrupted from doing something they enjoy or not progressing like they want while playing a video game. The only difference is that a child isn't mentally equipped to deal with the frustration, which is just pent up aggression, so they express it directly. Do we really need these studies? If your kid gets out of line, take his/her "stuff" away and beat the stew out of them, game over. My kid is an avid gamer and she knows if she crosses the line she's going to meet my belt on the other side.
Does this study account for the absence (or presence) of aggression reducing activities like playing outdoors or recreational sports? My guess is no.
Maybe kids predisposed towards violence seek out violent games, rather than the games forming such tendencies.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
First, correlation is not causation.
Second, aggression is not violence.
Third, this applies to all violent media exposure, not just video games.
Fourth, we have known about these links for more than a decade.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I've always believed that violent games cause agression in children. No doubt about it. Hell, I can tell that I'm more agressive after a marathon of gaming violence.
The problem is that these kids aren't taught what to do with that agression, and so they bring it out into the real world. Kids need to be taught that, in real life, hurting someone and looting their stuff isn't okay.
And parents and teachers are, more and more, not doing that.
Having a couple of young boys myself, I have observed that, for instance, watching a fast moving exciting film can make them over-excited quite easily. It's not really aggression, it's just that kids have much greater and more readily available energy than adults. Unfortunately these days adults often mistake this for a defect in their child.
The correct response is of course to fight back! There is nothing little boys like better than pretend fighting, and they tire very quickly.
But that does not mean there is not a problem here.
My mom has taught 1st graders for ~20 years. Back when Power Rangers used to be the shit, she would talk about how these kids would get all riled up playing Power Rangers during recess. When they got back into class, they were still all keyed up from their "fighting" between each other and would always get in trouble.
Does this mean Power Rangers causes violence in children? Of course not. But it does remind us that children can be excitable and impressionable, get caught up in the games they play, and sometimes don't realize when it's time to stop, or take the game too far. What they are doing before they exhibit this behavior is really immaterial: they might do this with a video game, a movie they see, a cartoon, or a couple of sticks they find in the gutter and play "sword fighting" with.
You have to set limits for children. Limit their diet of video games, TV, and other media, and let them know when their behavior related to this media consumption becomes unacceptable. Parenting 101.
Next door there are two teenage boys with a younger sister, she is mad for High School Musical and they like rock. So far we've had raised shouting, a TV being ripped for the wall and one son actually throwing himself out of a window (no injuries) to get away from the music.
Now you could say that they are just being older brothers and mocking their sister's taste, but I say its proof that High School Musical causes violence in teens and so should therefore be banned.
Some would further say that this is evidence of "appropriate" for groups and how the horror movies that the boys watch aren't appropriate for their younger sister while HSM is not appropriate for the boys. You'd almost think some sort of certification should be placed on movies and games to give an idea of what is appropriate (Harry Potter - both sexes and aged 7 to adult, HSM - girls between the ages of 7 and 11).
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I thought Jack Thompson was disbarred? Why are we still hearing about this crap?
So these kids were asked to track their own violent behavior when they played video games? People have been ingraining in society the idea that video games are bad, and that kids would be more apt to consider themselves violent, or would in general consider themselves more violent when playing a violent video games. The media needs to find something else to hyper focus on.
That I feel like punching children.
When I am playing Halo online and some snot-nosed 10 year old starts playing cheap and stuff, it makes me REALLY angry and aggressive at those kids... so maybe there is something to that...
......IF you've ever played Mario Kart.
I have three kids. Boys.
Yes, violent cartoons and video games cause aggression.
Let your kids watch He Man, Popeye, Halo, etc. Games or videos. Children mimic what they see. Bottom line.
It's like, DUH. If a child grows up watching his Daddy beat his Mommy because she talks to much, said child will grow up to beat his wife for talking too much, as well.
Little common sense here. Children are a product of their environment. Give them a loving environment, and they grow up loving (in general, and the facts are there to back this up, and any parent worth a shit can attest to this)... Let them grow up with parents that hate, don't give a shit, or whatever, and that's the way the kids will grow up.
I let my 3 and 4 yr old watch Kung Foo Panda a couple months ago. THAT was a great movie. And my kids, for about a week, thought Kung Foo on each other was A-OK.
--Toll_Free
Maybe they should do some research with a separate group of children who spend at least half an hour or so of that time every couple days playing video games with their parents or with some other responsible adult? They say your kids can watch pretty much any kind of TV as long as you watch with them and talk about it... I bet the same is true for video games too. Although if the parents become more violent, we may have some heavier findings on our hands.
It would've been interesting if they'd has a control group of kids playing non-violent games, or even educational games. I wouldn't be surprised if simply sitting there in front of a screen for hours leads to violent behavior--sedentary activity, physical stress (hands and poor sitting posture), visual stress--these are all possible confounding factors. Not to mention facing potentially frustrating challenges, whether they contain violence or not.
What's more, video games (as I'm sure many of you know) can be quite addictive. Complete a level or challenge, receive a quick burst of endorphins, develop a "need" to complete the next challenge. I'm not saying this always becomes an issue, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if some kids acted out simply because they were away from their favorite source of easy victory.
:
A SUMMIT CONVENED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON MEDIA AND THE FAMILY AND IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
Could it be that a politically motivated study by a political activist psychologist would come up with a conclusion that he had already decided on?
Remember, this is an organization that declared violent video games to be "Killographic Entertainment" and which claimed that Stubbs the Zombie was promoting cannibalism in our nations youth.
Sadly, the soccer-mom (or is that hockey-mom now?) audience for this anti-boy (notice the anti-male-children comment in the article "About 90% of Americans ages 816 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing soeven more if theyre boys." Even more, now that's precise, isn't it?) will read it uncritically happy that it confirms their biases.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I've been playing violent video games all of my life and have never felt the necessity to be violent at all... Who knows? Maybe I'll end up going on a killing spree by casting wall of fire and bone spear... You know... because video games are real life right?
There have been several studies on this type of thing and they are only starting to come up with a bit of correlation now? It is likely that this behaviour is caused by something else, such as bad parenting... Correlation does not imply causation!
Hell, I've been playing games since I was ten back when Pong was first released on a home system. Sure I've beaten the piss out of a few tennis players now and then but they deserved it. But this doesn't mean I'm going to go around smacking up gorillas, plumbers, or busting ghosts. Common! Man this just urks me. That's it, I'm gunna find me some dinosaurs and do some damage!
If you RTFA you'll find that it addresses a lot of the concerns here. (Parental supervision, correlation vs. causation, etc.) Seriously, every time geeks hear the words "violence in video games" they fly into a frothing rage and completely ignore the actual discussion. It's not all about people trying to oppress you, guys. If someone *does* find actual experimental correlation, we need to know about it.
Seriously, video games have absolutely no eff... MOTHER FUCK I JUST RAN DOWN A 1 SQUARE WIDE HOLE ON MARIO 3.
So, why must it necessarily be that violent games -> aggression. Why not aggression -> violent games. You know; feeling aggressive -> go pummel/kill something in a computer game rather than pummeling/killing in a game -> go pummel/kill something in real life.
As long as you don't start throwing houses, hotels or even chairs around, we're fine.
But correlation does not imply causality.
So the question remains, do aggressive children just naturally want to play more aggressive games, or does playing games actually cause aggression, or is there another factor that causes both?
In all of these studies and research, I am shocked by the fact that the obvious truth has been left out.
In our quest for "purity" through social aestheticism (teenage pregnancy "linked" to sex on tv and now video games "linked" to violence) we have left out the obvious fact. We are members of the animal kingdom. Our species is "human". We have all the same characteristics of other animals in the kingdom. We "hunt" for food at local food sources (the store). We adapt to social orders of things similar to other apes (we call it voting). And for all this, we call ourselves more "advanced" when we try to root out things that took evolution hundreds of thousands of years to program into our genes.
When are we going to accept the obvious truth? Instead of denying that it exists, we must accept that it does exist. We do not have hundreds of millions of murderers out there. Humans evolved through a clan-like experience. As recently as a thousand years ago humans were hunting bears, deers and god knows what else that is now extinct in the forest. They didn't just wake up one day and learn how to hunt. This was a learned skill and largely a group experience.
So when little kids are practicing Jackie Chan moves I think about the fact that evolution is a pretty grand thing. It is better instead, to teach children the difference between right and wrong and to teach them how to think. It would be near impossible to guard all children from the fact that evolution is at work even today.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
What; again?
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
The problem isn't video games, the problem is a lack of exercise. Schools by the tens of thousands are doing away with recess at the elementary level. At the middle and senior high school levels, lunches have been cut from a period ( 55 minutes ) to about 20 minutes.
When I was in school, we boys were always running out side to play some football, kick ball, dodge ball, or just to chase the girls.
Of course now you can't even chase the girls or that's harassment.
However, all this lack of exercise has got to build up excessive energy that has got to go somewhere - usually it's anger or aggression.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Think about hit, pop little Susie on the butt for mouthing off to you at home and she tells her teacher. Well the law requires the teacher to report any hints of abuse and next thing you know child services is at your door.
take my friend's day care experience, no more time out, no more quiet area, and no more telling kids they are "bad", anymore as that hurts their self-esteem. So what happens? They call the parents EVERY TIME the kid acts up. Now it is suddenly the parent's problem if the kid acts up as the care center will no longer discipline. So when the kid won't behave the parents are told to not bring them back etc yet the center doesn't put any bounds on the kids and wonder why.
The problem is that we are a knee jerk reaction society. People cannot yell, spank, or otherwise discipline their children in public places because some do gooder will freak out and claim its abuse. They lose the ability at home because what many may perceive as mild punishment is child abuse to some fanatic with the backing of government. The news is replete with stories of the government agency overreacts, fails to protect children it places, and more, yet parents don't stand a chance against a group who can use police powers to take your children let alone put you in jail.
When people started relying on others to discipline kids and took the rights of their parents and even schools to set bounds it removed any inhibition. There is a natural reaction to being punishment when it comes to children, they learn where the threshold and correct the behavior to stay on the nice side.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I saw this story this weekend, and am concerned with how it is being framed. I think that one side is saying, "This stuff is hazardous to children and must be controlled by the government." The other side often says, "This stuff is not necessarily hazardous to children, correlation is not causation, etc."
I think both sides are wrong. I think the correct answer is, "This stuff probably is hazardous to children, and parents should be just as careful about this stuff as they are about movies or playing in the street."
The right answer is not to make streets without full-length railings illegal. The right answer is to facilitate parents in understanding the issue and making the right decisions for their children. Sure, this stuff probably does have an effect on children's psychological development - what doesn't?
That doesn't mean this stuff is bad. It is art, like music and paintings. Some of it, like Dostoevsky or some of the creepy sections of The Bible, can have a negative impact on a child's world view. So good parents have to be involved in their children's consumption of it. But it will never be an appropriate place for the government to interfere. The government is too general and clumsy a tool to decide what specific instances of art are good or bad.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Woohoo ! That works for me. Coming next week..."Mildly convincing data", "Almost believable sources" and "A report that didn't suck too much ass".
Squirrel!
In a post-9/11 world, every child should be aggressive. Because there are terrorists who want to hurt them, and they need to be mentally prepared to respond to that threat.
This is somewhat true. Basically we took our 5 year old off games, and it helped somewhat. Games would make him increasingly more frustrated, inevitably leading to angry outbursts and crying etc. If, upon hearing this, I went and turned the game off, the he'd usually go ballistic, but really because I hadn't interceded earlier. I'm not talking about violent games (which we don't let him play), I'm talking about ANY competitive game.
So cutting out games does help, but here's the interesting thing - if his lego set (and what's more wholesome than lego?) keeps breaking and his frustration level increases and he would eventually become almost as upset...though not to the same extent as a game might.
So the real solution here is PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. If I see that he's not in a mood conducive to playing reasonably, I need to remove the trigger before it becomes an issue.
Now there's no way I'd let him play graphically violent video games, period. That's just stupid. Like if he sees a tame movie with fight scenes you've just put it in his head to try punching and kicking his 1 year old brother, even if there's no malevolence behind it. And it seems to make him hyper. And exposing him to simulations of shooting people over and over, may or may not have long term effects. I'm inclined to think that there's at least some negative side effects. Heck I can play some racing games long enough and when I get i the car, there's just that tiny hint of unreality, quickly expunged by my rational mind. But if he finds a gun or something when he gets older and he's not grown up, what do you think the logical progression is going to be? Plus hurting virtual people constantly will probably retard his development of empathy over time.
But again, we can't just let him do whatever he wants all the time it leads to unhealthy (or heck downright dangerous) situations. So if I just sit back and let him play and play and go ballistic (while I play my own video games heh), the fault is not the game, it's my parenting.
Stories like this make me want to smash things.
Do you play a lot of video games? :P
Various studies recently have shown no real link between violent video games and aggression. So we have one study that shows it does and various other studies that show it does not. Which one should we believe?
Here's just a few other studies that conflict with this study:
http://www.physorg.com/news5758.html
http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/007883.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050815-5205.html
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2184836/link-video-games-violent-teens
Take any sports game you like, preferably a single person sports (which you've never practiced before of course) as team sports would be harder to test individual performance. Boxing or skateboard are goo das they are very technical sports with an easy to establish baseline of success.
After playing a hundred hours or so, you should be a master at that game. Now dress up in your best sports gear and hop in aboxing arena or hop on a skateboard and start shooting ramps and sliding rails. If your theory holds water, you won't end up on "Attack of the Show" as the daily Epic Fail.
But even it continues to allow 'vague' definitions of violent behavior to count.
They don't want to admit that all their studies do crappy things like call 'talking back to the parent' as aggression. Or my personal favorite "refusing to quit playing the game" is 'aggressive' behavior.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If parents wouldnt buy their kids M rated games we wouldnt have so many little kids on Halo 3 talking trash and getting mad. Realize that most of the people getting mad at games are young kids. If parents would follow the rating system that ESRB has put out maybe we wuoldnt have this problem. The aggression is only going to get worse with the realease of Gears of War 2. Oh well any kid stupid enough to kill over a video game needs to get some help anyways
Every single study like this overlooks one very glaring fact: History.
I was a kid before video games existed. We did a lot of very violent things like beating each other up a la "Fight Club", throwing rocks at each other, and playing Robin Hood with sticks and trash can lids. I had a friend that would literally upend a chess board if he noticed he was losing, in order to force a tie.
Our competitive survival instinct is what is driving this. It doesn't matter if it's a video game, board game, or mind game. Some people use learn from their losses to improved their wins. Others get frustrated and lash out at their losses.
Why is this story tagged "correlationisnotcausation"? That was the point of this study, they say it's a causative relationship.
sex on TV is linked to teenage pregnancy
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
because before video games existed, mankind was pastoral and peaceful. in fact, if you go back to the days of the romans, when violent media meant crude stick figure drawings on a wall, everyone was loving and logical and reasonable and bountiful with good intent and no desire to to be aggressive
(rolls eyes)
humanity is in its essence violent and sexual. don't believe me? go look at a bunch of 3 year olds for 5 minutes. you tell me that they are acting the way they do because of media with a straight face. humans are not some pure vessels who are corrupted by outside forces. humans are born corrupt (where corrupt=possessing violent and sexual tendencies that are not socially appropiate). violent and sexual media, for psychologically well-adjusted people, is simply a way to jettison bad tendencies we all possess in asocial and harmless and therefore appropriate ways. where do these tendencies get jettisoned if that "bad" media did not exist?
if someone acts violent, it is because of that person's own failures, or their parents, not some media somewhere. if you, dear social conservatives, want to refute this notion, then kindly relinquish any intellectual honesty you might think you have when talking about the concept of personal responsibility. because the position of blame the individual, not the media, is the essence of personal responsibility: if i do something bad, i am accountable for it, no one else. meanwhile, attempts to blame outside influences, "bad" media, is simply a lame attempt to avoid responsibility
so dear social conservatives:
1. blame the media,
2. or continue talking about personal responsibility with a straight face
but you can't do both at the same time
in fact, the truth is, modern civilization's advances in media: movies, video games, etc., has served as a way to harmlessly express violent and sexual nature inherent in us, not amplify or create that which wasn't already there. that which is released harmlessly on a computer keyboard is that which is not expressed in a real world situation. the modern world we live in, while still containing violent and inappropriate sexual behavior (and always will, as long as you are talking about human beings) is far more peaceful than the days of the romans, or the middle ages, or even 100 years ago. you can't get rid of our tendencies, but you can minimize them, by providing avenues for harmless catharsis, with violent and sexual media
all studies to the contrary are pure propaganda or are fundamentally flawed
want a more peaceful world with less rape? more porn, more violent media. i absolutely believe that
there is no such thing as a psychologically balanced individual who can't tell the difference between violent/hypersexual media and the real world. actually, there ARE in fact individuals who can't tell the difference. such individuals are alrerady organically psychologically damaged or raised horribly wrong by awful parents. and if they had never encountered any violent or sexual media, they would still commit trangressions. they just wouldn't have anything to blame and they wouldn't have a ready audience in social conservatives who don't want to accept violent and sexual essential human nature out of some cotton candy idealism, and who willingly embrace the ridiculous attempt by criminals to avoid responsibility and blame the devil, the media
bullshit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
it's not a game either.
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of yOUR dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children, not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one. see you on the other side of it. the lights are coming up all over now. conspiracy theorists are being vindicated. some might choose a tin umbrella to go with their hats. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
we note that yahoo deletes some of its' (relevant) stories sooner than others. maybe they're short of disk space, or something?
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/23/what.matters.thirst/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_us/tent_cities;_ylt=A0wNcyS6yNJIZBoBSxKs0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/nasa.global.warming.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/05/severe.weather.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/02/honore.preparedness/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/28/what.matters.meltdown/index.html#cnnSTCText
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/07/atwood.debt/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212638400&en=744b7cebc86723e5&ei=5087%0A
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/senate.iraq/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
(deleted, still in google cache)http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080708/cheney_climate.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080805/pl_politico/12308;_ylt=A0wNcxTPdJhILAYAVQms0NUE
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/18/voting.problems/index.html
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/environment_arctic_dc;_ylt=A0wNcwhhcb5It3EBoy2s0NUE
(talk about cowardlly race fixing/bad theater/fiction?) http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/sec_short_selling/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=ApTbxRfLnscxaGGuCocWlwq7YWsA/SIG=11qicue6l/**http%3A//biz.yahoo.com/ap/081006/meltdown_kashkari.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
(the teaching of hate as a way of 'life' synonymous with failed dictatorships) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081004/ap_on_re_us/newspapers_islam_dvd;_ylt=A0wNcwWdfudITHkACAus0NUE
(some yoga & yogurt makes killing/getting killed less stressful) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_re_us/warrior_mind;_ylt=A0wNcw9iXutIPkMBwzGs0NUE
(the old bait & switch...your share of the resulting 'product' is a fairytail nightmare?)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_bi_ge/where_s_the_money;_ylt=A0wNcwJGwvFIZAQAE6ms0NUE
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it ha
I can agree that at least to some degree, video games can alter (or at least slightly adjust) a kid's behavior. Although I don't agree that playing a game can turn a kid into a sociopathic murderer, I do think it can adjust a kid's mood - there is definitely a difference in my son after playing too many straight hours of World of Warcraft - he becomes very moody, irritable, talks back (more than usual), etc. Much different than after playing too much Spore, for example.
I don't understand why people waste money and time doing these kinds of studies. Invariably they depend upon untested, questionable assumptions, such as equating "aggressive" play with violence. And it is all directed toward solving a problem that doesn't exist, because the violence statistics have consistently shown that as games have gotten more realistic and more violent, real-world violence has steadily decreased. In fact, it has decreased most precipitously in the very demographic that is the biggest consumers of videogames. Now of course, this doesn't prove that games don't make people aggressive, or even violent. What it does prove is that the violence-inducing effect of video games, if any, is so small that it is swamped by other social and demographic factors that influence violence.
Grrrr.... This annoys me so much I registered an account just to voice my opinion on the subject.
I am by no means an expert, but I have reviewed about 6 different research papers claiming this same revelation and also a few claiming the opposite. I cannot emphasize enough the "sometimes questionable" approach researches take to find a connection and how they evaluate relevant topics in relation to the paper.
Let me be more precise... One of the papers I researched evaluated that "getting into an argument with a teacher" was aggressive behavior. This meant that kids playing games and arguing with their teachers were violent. I've only briefly skimmed this article and it looks as thou the professor attaches violence values based on favorite games in a genre. So if the top 3 favorite sports games are violent then the entire category is deemed violent and thus everyone playing games in the category sport, plays violent games...
That's one approach I guess... I have also failed to notice any description as to what is deemed "violent" content. Is shooting something violent? Probably... But is pushing violent? Then basketball is a damn violent sport...
Regards,
Gazoo
gigo
I don't doubt the link for a second.. if the console is doing the babysitting and the children don't have a firm grasp on the context of 'video game.' The brain is wiring itself to responding to stimuli.. heart rate is elevated, adrenaline pumping..reward center 'rewarded' for beating bosses..
I'll probably let my children play video games (even being pretty liberal about it) Is it *really* going to be within my ability to keep my children away from GTA? I imagine he or she will either be able to play it at a friends house, or will get it off the net somehow.. all things that I was able to do as a youth. Maybe some games should only be played under supervision - like a graphic movie.
Hopefully they will know that rush they get is as fake as the special effects in the movies.
Oh, you say "GTA?".. you want your kid knowing about prostitutes etc? I don't. But I have this sense that my child will have access to most of that through wikipedia or some other source that I'm unable to censor. How likely is it that little Jimmy gets on his pc, prints up a few copies of said (or some other shocking) internet article, and brings them into class to share with buddies?
Anyhow.. I have no children, and no stats to back up the GIGO hypothesis. It's what my gut tells me. I'm interested to hear theories on techniques on raising children in the information age. How do we teach the ability to bring all of this information into the various contexts, and where do we draw that fine line between the childs curiosity and parents censorship. And how much censorship is okay at what level of maturity before it will work against the parent by causing the child to sneak around for whatever it is they hope to find. I think all of us here know what a determined youth at a computer is capable of.. :)
Batman has a wife? I think I speak for all of /. when I ask: Who is she? Batgirl? Catwoman? Elektra? The Invisible Woman? Mystique? Rogue? Storm? Super Girl? Wonder Woman?
Every year or so someone puts out yet another study on the correlation between violence and video games. Most of these studies are flawed in one way or another. However a few years back one study was put out that found the correlation between violence and video games was particular not with average children, but those suffering from certain disorders. I can't cite the reference however; has anyone else seen this?
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Competition breeds aggression. It's a good thing. It's what makes the world go 'round.
Adventure games are considered violent?
Use KNIFE on THROAT.
Kurt Vonnegut was wrong in his A Clockwork Orange that an overdose of violence makes non-aggressive.
Aggression is like an addiction: you need more and more to get the kick.
Dear pro violent-video-gamers:
It is the immersion in the action which makes - not only kids - get indoctrinated. Through violent games with violence.
Lets watch the crime statistics.
And the armys of many countries will need pilots for their drones.
Well, the big problem I see is that the kids were asked if they felt more agressive. This is not an objective analysis, and so makes the correlation subjective. A better methodology would have been to have a group of children who do not play video games and a group of children who do, and compare the behavior incidents reported. The methodology used by this report is subjective, where reporting observational data is much less so, though technically still subjective as well.
Even before I read the story I suspected that Anderson was involved.
Anderson has never done a study where he didn't find that something caused aggression. He sees aggression everywhere.
The problem with this? At least in the papers of his that I have read (and it is hard to read them all because his name gets put on a lot of papers as co-researcher) he has never defined what he means by "aggression." The closest I have ever seen him define the term is in a table in one article where he gives examples of aggression. One of those examples was, "raising one's voice."
Now I'm no psychologist but I think that there is a big difference between yelling and physically hurting someone.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
The first time my kids gave me a hard time about what they can play on their XBOX, I warned them, the second time I gave the system to charity, problem solved. Parents are the problem not kids or video games... and I hear all the time how parents don't have time, blah blah, if you have to many bills to have a parent home, then its time to trim the fat so one can.
This was WAY more on topic than the post about "parents are not disciplining kids" - it directly points out problems with the so-called research.
MOD PARENT +1 INSIGHTFUL PLEASE!
Psychology studies of the effects of playing video games have found emotional responses and physical reactions associated with reinforced violent and anti-social attitudes. It is not clear, however, whether these markers are associated with increases in one's preferences for anti-social behaviors or whether virtual behaviors act to partially sate one's desire for actual antisocial behaviors. Violent or criminal behaviors in the virtual world and in the physical world could plausibly be either complements or substitutes. A finding of one versus the other would have diametrically opposing policy implications. I study the incidence of criminal activity as related to a proxy for increased gaming, the number of game stores, from a panel of US counties from 1994 to 2004. With fixed county and year effects, I can examine if changes relative increases in gaming in an area are associated with relative increases or decreases in criminal activity. For six of eight categories of crime, more game stores are associated with significant declines in crime rates. Proxies for other leisure activities, sports and movie viewing, do not have a similar effect. For confirmation, I also find that mortality rates, especially mortality rates stemming from injuries, also are negatively related to the number of game stores.
Video Games, Crime and Violence by Michael R. Ward, University of Texas at Arlington - Department of Economics
There is no epidemic of youth violence in America.
The whole concept is a lie manufactured, distributed and perpetuated by the media. Kids are not killing each other more frequently than they used to. In fact, it turns out the opposite is true.
CAUTION: Childen at Play - The Truth About Violent Youth and Video Games
Overall results of the study found that although violent video games appear to increase people's aggressive thoughts (which it would not be surprising that people are still thinking about what they were just playing), violent games do not appear to increase aggressive behavior.
This as true for both correlational and experimental studies. Also it was found that studies that employed less standardized measures of aggression produced higher effects than better standardized measures of aggression. In other words, better measures of aggression are associated with lower effects.
Researcher Finds Scant Evidence Linking Violent Games With Aggressive Behavior
"It's a natural behavior and it's surprising that the idea that children and adolescents learn aggression from the media is still relevant," says Richard Tremblay, a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and psychology at the University of Montreal, who has spent more than two decades tracking 35,000 Canadian children (from age five months through their 20s) in search of the roots of physical aggression. "Clearly youth were violent before television appeared."
Taming Baby Rage: Why Are Some Kids So Angry?
The BBFC has accepted there is no proven link between anti-social behaviour and violent videogames - but said more research is required to conclusively rule any connection out.
No evidence connecting games and violence, says BBFC News
First, to quote someone smarter than I: correlation does not prove causation. They found a correlation between children who play video games in their free time and violent tendencies. They have not proved anything.
Second: they could have it backwards. What if violent children enjoy playing games more than those with less violent tendencies.
Lastly, I grew up playing all sorts of video games. Everything from blood-and-gore games to Mario. I can't say that I'm a violent person and I can definitely say that playing video games does not increase my aggression.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go massacre some Order in RvR...
When I was a kid I was angry and violent until I had video games to keep me busy and make me feel 'rewarded' for accomplishing something, and also sparked my imagination a lot which turned me to drawing and music. Teachers tried to discourage this because everything I was doing was video game related, and parents tried to kick me off the TV, but I kept at it and now I'm working at Ubisoft.
Study shows correlation between studies linking video games to aggression and agression. News at F*$&ING 11!
The study concludes that it has "pretty good evidence" that there is a link between video games and childhood aggression.
I didn't RTFA, so I'll just assume that the link is that video games reduce childhood aggression.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
GP Post had nothing to do with the research, just whining about parents not disciplining.
Parent Post responds AND adds value by pointing out what is wrong with the study's methods.
MOD PARENT UP! Somehow GP, which is actually off topic, got to +5 Insightful: Parent DESERVES A MOD UP
I prefer this correlation study.
Credit: er, some guy on the tubes.
While I don't know anything about the specifics of this study, but I don't really have any problem accepting that video games have some degree of influence over gamers' behavior. And when you think about it, this shouldn't come as a shock to anybody. I mean, if these games have zero influence then why is in-game advertising on the rise?
So should we ban violent video games? Hell no, in the same way that we shouldn't ban violent movies or violent books. The trick as a parent is to be aware of the content and make decisions about what your kids can watch.
Heh, all the while? Our nation CONDONES an unjustified war, & all of our law is backed by either violence, pain, or the threat thereof (either fincially or physically)... I mean, in the light of that? This article, is outright hilarious.
Having recently written a few papers on the topic I've read enough research that shows a correlation with violent video games and aggression. What these little news bites don't tell you is that the aggression if often very short lived afterwards. None of them make any link to violent behaviour. They keep telling the same story, violent games make kids aggressive and by implication violent.
I have yet to see a longitudinal study to see if games lead to life long patterns of aggressive behaviour.
A couple studies suggest aggressive kids are attracted to aggressive games which makes it a direction of causality question. One paper looked at students in Belgium and the Netherlands and suggested that socio-economic status played a role. The poorer kids did worse academically. They were more prone to playing video games as a way of achievement and gaining esteem from their peers.
I can't find where I read it, a credible source reviewing school shootings found that there are stronger links between violent books or movies than video games to violent events
Slashdotters recently concluded a study that monitored several hundred users around the world, asking them to rate their violent behavior over a period of several months while they perused the internet during their "free time" (at work). The study concludes that there is "pretty good evidence, and y'know, that's good enough for science" that there is a correlation between bad parenting and nerd rage.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Remind me again, what the fuck is wrong with aggression?
It's how we deal with/apply the aggression that determines the 'good' or 'bad' aspects of it.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
What a huge discovery! Violent entertainment desensitizes children to violence and encourages violent behavior.
On the other hand, inattentive parents do just as much harm. I just want to walk around my childrens' school and tell parents "No, little Joshua isn't just *really* smart and acting out of . He needs a good old fashioned butt whooping." This society we live in is designed to create the kinds of problems we are now experiencing. Some parents use corporal punishment incorrectly, therefore all corporal punishment is bad. It's the classic blame the "technology" for the bad implementation. Only when parents start disciplining children, and by discipline I mean the whole enchilada of not just corporal punishment when needed but also teching children right from wrong, spending time with them, and not being afraid to be a parent (as opposed to trying to be your children's best friend, which really just means that people are *afraid* to tell their children "no" to certain things), will we see violent behavior in children curbed.
blah blah blah
i'll put on my wizard hat and my +1 sword (brought from Wizard Under Serious Seige (WUSS) for $999.99 while supplies last, visit online for details) and... oh wait.. is this real life?
They do NOT attempt to properly show causation.
What they did was examine how 'aggressive' the kids were at the beginning of the study, and note that the game-playing kids became more aggressive even when taking their start values into account. Certainly that's more useful information that only having them play games and measuring the aggression at the end of it.
However, if you're still letting the kids choose their own videogames, then you still have a strong chance that kids who were already going to become more aggressive over time anyway will pick the more violent games.
A better next step for research would be to randomly assign kids to play violent and non-violent games, in order to remove the child's inherent tendencies. That still wouldn't be a perfect study, but it'd be a start.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
There is a ~link~ which may well mean that the violent kids prefer the violent games. It is much better they vent their aggression in the fictional world than having them go out and beat up the "nerd" who they have decided "has it coming" or vandalize property because it is "fun."
These types of studies are easily debunked just by considering something like Looney Tunes. They've been around for 50-80 years, and if you consider the content of them, they are "violent". Characters shooting guns, exploding bombs and dynamite, hitting each other, etc.
And yet somehow those generations are considered "less violent" than today's politically correct feel-good cartoons.
I grew up playing the Atari 2400. Lots of the games we played contained violence and I have to say that I have been personally scarred by that. To this day, my anger flares and I have to try very hard not to go into a berserker rage whenever a brightly colored blob shoots a colored square at me. Luckily, I haven't had too many run-ins with such blobs, but as I get older and my eyesight worsens (from hours spent in front of a TV playing these games) I'm afraid that the world is getting 'blobbier' by the year and this may cause me to eventually lash out at anything within reach. This is an issue that is little addressed, but should be as the generation growing up on Atari games grows older for the sake of all the pixelated blobs out there.
The fact is I don't know. I have my suspicions that it lies somewhere between my first and second question, but that is only my gut.
Well hallelujah, the first intelligent response I've read on this thread.
Most slashdot readers would never accept that there's something wrong with violent video games, because it challenges their self-concept. If you don't like the research findings, then conduct your own study - and try not to fool yourself into getting the conclusions you want.
Evidence is evidence is evidence. People can argue black is blue all they want, but if you want to find the real answers, then you need to open your mind and look. The studies must continue, and if there really is causation, then that should be understood.
So thank-you for posting.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The US military thought there was something to it or they wouldn't have tried it long ago and continue to find ways to use it. If it works, then they will continue to use it for recruiting, training, desensitization, etc. Good luck if you will get all the details behind their work on this stuff but its quite likely the biggest place for data on this stuff; at least in terms of sample size.
The whole thing is silly on 1 front and has a basis in reality on another so we keep wondering in the dark without an abstract model to help discriminate in this clearly fuzzy area of understanding.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I play a lot of very violent first person shooter games (ET, Quake, Doom, ET4QW, etc.) All I know for sure is that the more people I kill online, the fewer people I have to kill in real life.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
This is the same crap that came about with rock music in the 1980's, which was turning our kids to satanism and making them violent (and there was lots of teen violence going on at the time, but not due to rock music) then in the 1990's, it was violence and sex on TV that was making kids violent.
Now in the new millennium, it's videogames.
Maybe in the next decade it'll be cell phones. "cell phones make your children violent!"
also, fun fact, teen violence figures dropped drastically in middle of the 1990's, right when violent games started becoming commonplace. But no, we cant have little johnny getting made at a game or getting frustrated, he needs to go out and beat the shit out of a random kid at school like a normal person!
Ok people, I'll keep this short. Stop blaming everything else for the upbringing of your children and look directly at the lack of parenting.
Videogames didn't cause it, Movies didn't cause it, that crazy hip hop music that the kids are listening to today didn't cause it. The lack of a parent not disciplining their kid did.
This comic is to a Mr Jack Thompson who's now been disbarred but is for every dirt bag out there that wants to blame something else other than himself for when his kid screws up:
http://cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20051012
It's also sad that the most relevant line comes from the Southpark movie but here it is:
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!
Should read "Bullshit linked to this study"
"But this one goes to 11!"
see here (though, admittedly, it is labeled as "non-standard" whatever the hell that means).
I don't have aggression issues. However if my 360 RRoDs .. all bets are off :)
My study is on the link between perceived stupidity and agressive acts perpetrated on inanimate objects. So for there is a strong correlation - after reading the tripe in this Slashdot summary, I smashed an old keyboard (don't worry, it was a useless AT plugin one).
At one stage all mass shootings were carried out by people on Prozac.
Is it going to be controlled?
"Acting out" is an indirect way that a child expresses a suppressed emotion, which may require (or be said to require) therapy to uncover. "Acting up" is just plain misbehaving (the kind that used to require discipline), or in more modern jargon, "inappropriate behavior". I don't know which applies to your kid, but when people use the former to mean the latter it, well, kind of grates on my nerves. You know, the "concerned" teachers and therapists and yuppie moms and all. :)
U.S. government prevented most passenger from carrying aboard their box cutters. Only the terrorists were allowed to carry them. They should put a ban on terrorists(intent) rather than box cutters. Cutting a box open, while in-flight, never crashed a plane.
-DuhSlav
Has anybody actually read the report or do you guys just like to rant about do-gooders and kids in general? Just don't have any if they are too much trouble for you......
...recycled "slow news day" stories linking games and youth aggression linked to aggressive behavior in gamers.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I find it very convenient that the news stations report on how 'violent video games' affect child behavior and ignore all the violence they show in their networks. When's the last time someone saw a piece of good news come off the news station? It's always either violent, depressing or downright bs. Then they have the audacity to blame violence in children on video games. I'm not saying that some children may be affected by video games, some aren't mature enough to handle a violent video game...what I'm saying is that I'm sick of the news stations constantly pointing the blame elsewhere and never taking the responsibility to look in the mirror themselves. Everyone has their own opinion about how video games affect children. Personally, I think video games are a form of release for most children now a days from all the pressures of school and life in general. I know when I was a kid that constantly hearing my parents yell " f you this" and "f you that" was more traumatizing than any video game could have imposed on me and I grew up with the Mortal Kombat series of games, some of the most violent video games ever released.
"Stories like this make me want to smash things. "
You make me so mad! Why do you want to make me so mad? If I do things, bad things, it's all YOUR fault.
No ... wait ... no it isn't.
It's my fault.
Never Mind. - very bad Rosanna Rosannadanna imitation
Toad
#3 - The usual reporting errors ("self-reporting" and "reporting from other students" where they have incentive to overinflate reports and can easily be coaxed into doing so by someone they view as an "authority").
True. Who thought that self-reporting was a useful methodology?! Next we'll be self-reporting crime statistics.
Also, it isn't clear whether contact sports games are classified as "violent." As the article points out, the same problem afflicted efforts to study television violence. How does a football tackle compare to COPS or Power Rangers? It is absurdly subjective.
Do you means something like taking a tumor and "reforming" it into something like a mass of herpes cells and then blasting it?
I'm sorry, did I just ruin your argument there, Sparky? Or was your question rhetorical?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
correlation from self reported child surveys is as close to reality as you can get. In other news, a recent study showed a similar correlation between kiddies with mad FPS skillZ and high scores in Likert Scale surveys, and spawn campers confine themselves to the use of deductive logic.
You speak London? I speak London very best.
...I have to transfer to a PvE server on WoW, in hopes that I will stop beating my family whenever I get ganked.
This guy has been presenting this research as "New" since 1987....
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/00senate.pdf
The link above is a transcript to the Senate hearing back in 2000 regarding this study. If you read the 1987 study, the 2000 study and this "New" study you'll find the methods are all almost exactly the same. So the study and the results are anything but new. Also, the roll of the parents, the test subject's home situation and their family histories are almost completely ignored in these studies. If you honestly think the influence of daddy beating the tar out of mommy can be overshadowed by the influence of Gordon Freeman waxing genetically mutated demons from an alternate reality on a TV screen.... I'm sorry to say, you should never be a parent. Give your kids up for adoption right now. Even if they're 16 years old... give them to someone else. There is still a chance you won't have fucked them up completely.
The reason this shit is so annoying isn't because we know it's bogus... it's because supposedly reputable news organizations like CNN continue to treat us like we're retarded and have the memory capacity of a comatose, lobotomized two year old with ADD.
You know what sucks!!! When you read a news story about a study and it doesn't mention the methodology (ie: the error ratio, I would bet this one is really high) used for the study! Seriously that's like saying 78 per cent of all stats are made up on the spot... shame on CNN for not following one of the basic rules of journalism. Learn how to report or get out of the business, this kind of crap does no good.
If there is a causal link between violent themes in video games and resulting behavioural change then that precedent suggests that sensationalism and fear mongering in the news media would be far more dangerous to society.
Any reasonable rational person would deduce that any causal effect that 'violent video games' (terribly fuzzy definition) is vastly overwhelmed by the effects of parenting, peer pressure, environment (poverty, diet, health), culture and violent sport. If anything it is the single medium in which is a wholly safe to person and property as an outlet for aggression.
Problem is aggressive play is different to pathological/anti-social behaviour. Even if you establish a cause and effect relationship not a just a tenuous link then you have to show that exposure to violent games is a contributing factor to a life of crime or anti-social or violent behaviour. Trying to pin blame on violent media is ignoring the elephant in the room. This is the #1 criticism I see in response to these kind of studies when actual credible psychologists [with no axe to grind...] chime in to the debate.
I've seen some pretty compelling studies showing video games have a calming focusing effect on players, are intensely social experience and are associated with academic and career success as opposed to other babysitters like television. These observations don't seem to get front-page treatment in the news media. No surprises there, of course but doesn't that kinda support my original argument?
One could say contact sports are directly and blatantly violent and encourage aggression, mob mentality. So why hasn't violent sport turned our kids into violent monsters? Because, usually there are parents and coaches etc having some actual input and often hard work in channeling kids into teamwork and self betterment. So how about some more parenting and less excuses.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Let's start with the assertion that states have tried to get M-rated games banned from minors...
this is completely falatious. No state has actually tried to restrict the sale of M-rated games, instead they've all applied their own idiotic, poorly formed, and completely vague criteria for the restriction of games, hence why the courts denied them.
It assumes that they were not playing violent video games at the start of the study.
Many schools have 0 tolerance for fighting, meaning that even defending yourself counts as violent activity; maybe the kids are just starting to stand up for themselves.
Aggression goes up over time... but that's what happens naturally for young boys, you know, pubescence / adolescence. Doing a similar study you could prove that nearly anything leads to teenage violence, or *gasp* teenage sexuality. ... that's enough for now...
Does that even count as a scientific study?
I love and appreciate the reasonable, well thought out, intelligent responses people here have to the idea that video games cause violence, but I really feel that in the end, we'll just had had a lot of wind on both sides of the issue. Really, do you not see how you're being drawn into a fight? They: "Video games correlated with violence..." Us: "Bullshit! No! You're so wrong!"
This is beside the point, though. To get to the point, we need to understand violence. Ask: what is violence and where does it really come from?
Violence does not from video games as much as video games mirror the violence that already happens in the world around us, games that allow us to view the seriousness of life in a non-serious fashion. Violence no more comes from there than it comes from comic books, from stories that can challenge our worldviews and excite our imaginations.
Violence does not come from anything within the system because violence is inherent in the system. This is a fundamental truth that our media, our government, our educational system, and our common learned social behaviors have been designed implicitly to deny, obfuscate, and muddle.
All violence has a common root: belief. It is a violence of and against one's own mind to hold belief. In belief there is division because not all will hold the same beliefs. We can all get along as long as we hold the same beliefs, and that is no freedom. Because we have varying beliefs about god, about country, about morality we therefore have violence and war, suffering.
Our entire system of governance, capitalism and money is rooted in this violence. The idea "It's just business," dehumanizes and divides us, as we are all forced to patronize to our best personal interests and cannot afford to act in the interest of all people. If I had a store and I told you the store down the street had better, more inexpensive products, I would be out of business. Because of our money system, we cannot trust each other. Do I really need my wisdom teeth removed or is this guy just trying to buy a new car?
These things are the cause of violence. Not video games. Not comic books. Not the movies. We can fight them on their level forever, countering their lies with our reason, but we'll never ascend, we'll always be playing on their level, because they knew they were lying in the first place and they will always be able to find a new scapegoat when they need it. Instead, talk about the real causes of violence. Talk about how violence is birthed from scarcity, from class structure, from cultural elitism. If we all had bread, there would be no need to ever steal bread and therefore no need to keep bread-stealers in prison.
The system is violence. Video games are simply a spirtual expression of revolution. Video games are an attempt to show the real world war games as they are: just games and video games by their nature invite us to not be serious, to play. I think video games are beautiful, but I also don't think I'll convince Anne Harding or Jack Thompson of that and I don't think I need to.
The system is violence.
"CNN is running a story this morning that explains new research showing a correlation between bipedism and aggression in children. The study monitored groups of US and Japanese children, asking them to rate their violent behavior over a period of several months while they used two limbs for locomotion. The study concludes that it has "pretty good evidence" that there is a link between walking on two legs and childhood aggression."
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Did anyone stop to think that maybe these violent video games are only triggering violence in children that are predisposed to violence?
Wait...that's not any better...
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Those two things will NEVER correlate.
Anyway, when aggression is fun, is it such a bad thing?
CNN (Communist News Network) a.k.a. "Safety Nazi's" - Suppressing your mindset, one article at a time
"So the arrival of international television came as something of a shock to many. When WWE wrestling was first shown in Bhutan, it perplexed the people, who did not know that the violence depicted was carefully staged. The country's only newspaper received several letters from Bhutanese children asking why men were beating each other up.
And now there are reports of increasing violence in Bhutan's schools, with children copying wrestling moves they see on television.
But many are sceptical about the influence of television on previously isolated communities. A study in St Helena, which only allowed television nine years ago, found no link between television violence and children's behaviour."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bhutan-grapples-with-influence-of-tv-wrestling-violence-732571.html
You say agression, I say assertive...
A study monitoring groups of US and Japanese asking them to track what they consume, found that every single heroin addict had consumed milk at some point before they started using heroin. The study concludes that it has "pretty good evidence" that there is a link between milk consumption and heroin addiction.
"Rate their violent behavior" this is an awesome way to do a study. About as awesome as giving kids pot and asking them if it improves their lives (YES! And this is totally accurate, it won't become a financial burden or affect them on the job later!).
Do these people even understand how to run statistics? This experiment is not blind, or double-blind, and has selection bias!
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Headlines are marketing, even if the body of a story is well balanced and objective. This particular story is somewhat balanced, but it's not being relayed objectively.
Take a quick look at the sources in the CNN article and their position on the subject. The first source, the one linking violent games to aggression, is a researcher (read: knowledgeable, but not necessarily experienced).
The only one who is actually a professional in the mental health field says "It's not the violence per se that's the problem.." and that "violent video games" is too vague.
The last doesn't actually say that video games are responsible for violence, just that they are an element of a "culture of disrespect" which is the real problem. He says the real impact is from the shaping of norms and attitude. That's a pretty distinct responsibility of parenting, not video games.
All that aside, the links to "celebrity-mom slugfest over vaccines" and "why food allergies in children are on the rise" that are interspersed throughout the story should indicate pretty strongly that CNN is interested in readers & page views, not thoughtful, objective communication.
Last time i checked, people have been saying this for years. The most violent people i know at my school hardly ever play video games, so does that disprove there statement? I absolutely love violent and graphic video games and anime, so does that mean that theres a chance i will be violent? Most likley not, even though me and many nice and gental people i know like FPS and other fairley violent games, im not worried about any of us shooting down our neighborhood.
O.o
Dumber - this study proves nothing be correlation does not prove affect and too many variable ( like if media type is relavant) are not locked down.
Duh - what you spend a lot of time thinking about affects your actions, If it doesn't something is wrong with you.
What you think about affects your preference in entertainment and your preferences re-enforce what you already think about. Might as well study if tall people are taller then average.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
This has been thought about before.
Only, we have no John Spartan to thaw out.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Is the caveman aggessive? Perhaps violent if need be? Humans are aggresive and have the potential for violence by nature.
Odd, yet another "x has been linked to y" report on CNN today, just saw another one that reports that "Teens that regularry watch sexually explicit material on TV" (I assume they mean something on prime time TV) "Have a higher risk of teenage pregnancies.
Pulling random stuatistics out of their asses for 2 subjects... gg CNN, gg!
Great, just great.
Now Jack Thompson has something to get his jollies with.
Plus, every gun control nutjob, the "Brady Bunch", and every Lets-Ban-Everything-That-Is-Harmful yuppie now has another reason to restrict *YET ANOTHER* aspect of our lives!
This, ontop of the BAAQMD's new dictate that it is now, in my little town, now a *CRIME* to use your fireplace on days they declare "Spare The Air" days in winter:
First Offense: $100 fine, and you have to attend a class on how to burn a fire without creating excess smoke.
Second/Subsequest Offenses: $100 fine.
Life is full of hazards and dangers. Get used to it. Someone tell the HAZARD NAZIS to shut the fuck up.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Just seeing Miriam's face sends me scrambling to build more rovers (or aircraft, depending on my current tech).
If it wasn't for the joyful release of playing violent videogames I would probably have grown up a serial fragger.
So child aggression before video games existed was caused by... what again? Oh, TV, right? And before that it was caused by... comics, right? And before that there was no child aggression.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
Researchers have found a link between breathing and death. So breathing will inevitably lead to death. Also, a new link between murderers and anger have proven new evidence that people that get angry are potential murderers.
Psychology is too open ended and has too much variance to be able to pin a psychological problem to one thing. I hate seeing this crap.
Best thing I have read on Slashdot all week, well done sir.
Hot off the press today in the American Statistical Association is a study *PROVING* -- that's right, despite only citing a non-limit probability, a logical deduction has been formed! -- the link between lazy studies and axes ground.
The study PROVED that 88% of all studies which find a correlation between independent variables were lazy studies, and, in a freak occurrence of nature, that the same studies were also grinding political axes. It also demonstrated a very strong positive correlation between the laziness of the researcher and the number of axes ground.
The study has been hailed by various sources as conclusive evidence demonstrating that correlation is, in fact, equivalent to causation.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
> Maybe so, but try explaining that to the little girl next door who misses her turtle.
In all fairness, that was in self defense! I mean it was *walking* towards him. Yeah, so he had a few 'shrooms beforehand, but how can you blame the man for not wanting to tangle with it?
Just be glad it didn't have a red shell...
If there is a correlation, what is the r value?
People who have no sig are cool
I know I'm posting late, but you can find the paper that was published in Pediatrics here:
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2005-2009/08ASGISYNK.pdf
The researcher is Dr Craig A. Anderson from Iowa State University.
Have a look at the paper. You don't need to be an expert in behavioural psychology to see some significant problems. Here's four of them:
(in the largest group of some 1,000 Japanese students aged 13-18, students were asked what 'types' (ie: genres) of games were their favorites, and what were the three next most favorite. They were given a score between 0 and 5 based on how many genres they selected were deemed violent. Behavioural scientists define violence more broadly than most people would. The Sims contains violence, for example, because people can have brawls. This 0-5 score was then moderated by the number of hours each player spent playing video games. This was the base value that was used to define how much violent material each player was exposed to.
To determine violent behaviour in the largest sample, students were asked to fill out a survey based on the Buss-Perry scale, which you can find an example of here: http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/aggress.pdf This told the researchers how aggressive/violent the student 'actually' was.
Now, I have serious concerns about behavioural psychology research at the best of times, but this study isn't even a good example of it.
I'd say the study's methods (and thus its results) are dubious at best. Do games or other media cause violence? Maybe. We just can't answer the question through studies like this. I would point out however that since the early 1990s violent crime in the United States has been declining:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
So, if games do in fact make people more aggressive or violent, it doesn't seem (yet) to have translated into actual physical violence.
We can add this study to the heap of dodgy behavioural psych research on media effects which lazy journalists or ideologues can wheel out whenever they want to make a statement like "xxxx causes violence, and there's a lot of research to support it".
Yeah, there is a lot of research out there - bad research. But a pile of shit doesn't smell any better just because there's a lot of it. Problem is, if you're preaching to the converted, your audience will all agree they're smelling roses, and if you say it with enough confidence and can slap a PhD on the end of your name, a lot of people will assume their noses are wrong.
Too bad more people aren't educated in the basic art of critically assessing what they see, hear and read.
Research like this *may* tell us that video game playing increases the likelihood children will exhibit aggressive behaviors. What it can't do is tell us objectively whether aggressive behaviors are good or bad. If the Spartans of ancient Greece had video games and knew that games produce aggressive children, they would have encouraged video game playing all the more.
All major governments & religions claim the right to use deadly force.
That's where kids learn it.
If kids had space to run and play, they wouldn't be violent. But complaining about video games is easier than asking for more and safer parks, or for cities to become more "human friendly".
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