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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.
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.
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Could you clarify this distinction you make between the passive aggression of listening to pantera and active aggression that video games 'are'?
Does this mean passively watching violent movies is also passive aggression? And killing a mosquito is active aggression?
It sounds more like personal preference to me, clad in nice sounding terms.
It's been shown in many sound social psychological studies over decades that in children there is a strong correlation between watching violent tv and aggressive behavior, between playing violent video-games and aggressive behavior and between listening to aggressive music and aggressive behavior.
Go google (google scolar) yourself or look it up on wikipedia.
--There has never been any study proving a causal relationship between these (with behavior being the dependent factor) where the effect lasts for more than a few minutes. --
The catharsis theory ("I go to martial arts school so I don't have to be violent at home", "I listen to pantera once I'm at home so I can be more calm when I'm at work") is a Freudian theory disproved ages ago as well. I'm sure people can peruse the relevant social and personality psychology literature themselves on this. (journal of personality and social psychology, etc. )
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This is just good advice for kids in general. Give them warning about what is going to happen in the future. I have a 2.5 year old and a 1 year old. If you turn off the TV without telling the kid that it's going to get turned off, or if you just say, "we are leaving the park now", the kid will get cranky and wine. However if you tell them 10 minutes before hand, and remind them at 5 minutes and 2 minutes, you tend to get a much better reaction out of them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I have 5 kids, went through the age where they believed we could not touch them. During one heated argument, they said they would call the police. I said, tell you what, let me do it.
So I called our local police, and the office came in and told the kids what I could do and what I could not do. And they also said if I needed it, they would taze them a few times for me, so I would not get in trouble ...
Discipline problems went away after that.
I understand the need for clear, credible discpline and I want to be sympathetic to your point of view.
But I must say, every time -- every single time -- that I have seen a parent spank, public or private, the parent has been obviously emotionally agitated and acting out of anger. I'm not saying that these people don't have a right to raise their children the way they choose, and I'm sure there really are parents who spank thinking only of the child's needs (as opposed to the parent's need to express anger). The trouble is, as long as pro-spankers seem to be saying that spanking = good and more spanking = better, instead of discussing the merits of good spanking vs. bad spanking, it becomes more difficult to accept their arguments. Over time I think this erodes the credibility of corporeal punishment as a legitimate means of parenting.
I'm sure that all discpline must inflict pain of some sort (physical or otherwise), and so it's possible for almost any discpline tactic to be abusive if misused. However, humans are strongly wired to hit things when frustrated, and children should not be physical targets of frustration (with discpline as a mere excuse).
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I agree. There's a clear difference between disciplining one's kid and telling him he's a worthless good-for-nothing, and that he'd be better off dead. The former makes him a better person. The latter will turn him into a poor excuse of a human being, blaming everyone for each of his problems.
You're also hitting the nail on the head on #4 (well, that's a bit obvious with the tag "correlationisnotcausation"). If a kid has murderous intentions and wants to take revenge upon the world, he will get grand theft auto and start killing everyone on the game.
On the contrary, if a kid has a healthy psychological condition, he'll enjoy GTA, but because of the normal gaming elements.
I had a friend whose life was a mess, his father beat him, his mother abandoned him and the people he had to live with kept saying he was useless. His favorite videogames were GTA, Hitman 3, and other violent videogames - including Street Fighter, where I totally kicked his ass :P -. He often gets in streetfights, occasionally beats someone on the street because he felt like it, and one time he tried to commit suicide.
He went once with a psychologist and things have been improving for him, but he gets kicked out of jobs often (guess why). Are videogames the cause of his violent behavior? I don't think so.
But "abused and neglected kid becomes violent" isn't a headline as catchy as "kid who played GTA becomes violent".
Agreed.
Children need consistency. They'll push the boundaries, but it's especially then they need to know that you aren't budging. They should know what is going to happen to them when they do something. Instead, many parents let something go on unchecked and then explode with anger.
Parents should have certain offenses that get a spanking. For my children, its lying in order to get out of trouble. I always want the punishment for just owning up to a fault to be less than trying to lie and get out of trouble. In my mind, this reinforces the concept of personal accountability. If you mess up, own up to it. If you don't own up to it, then that's when things go really badly. After each time I spank them, I hug them and reassure them of my love. That's what usually makes them cry and feel bad for what they've done, and that's exactly what you want: remorse.
Not being perfect, I have spanked my children out of anger and will probably continue to do so at times. But I *always* regret that later. But as bad as that is, people always complement me on my well behaved children. I'd rather err on the side of giving them a bad spanking every once in a while (read: the exception and not the rule) than having children run amok.
I think you never see the proper use of spankings because that doesn't tend to happen in public. A parent has to be pretty angry to spank a child in public, and that's exactly when NOT to use a spanking. What you don't see are the good spankings administered in private.
blah blah blah
They did.
The violence has always been there. What is missing now is respect for authority. The respect was what kept a lid on the violence and kept it hidden. You used to have to isolate someone in a bathroom. Now you can just beat the shit out of them in the halls.
My son got suspended when a group ganged up on him. Non of the gang-bangers were punished. He said something they didn't like, so he was being 'disrespectful'. The lesson there was that it is ok to force your will on someone, as long as you can demonstrate that they did something you didn't like.
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