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Don't Study the Video Game, Study the Gamer
rrossman2 writes with this quote from a USA Today article about research recently presented to the American Psychological Association: "Video games — especially violent ones — are constantly under scrutiny from parents concerned about negative effects. Now, research suggests that those worries should focus more on the player's personality rather than the content of the games. 'If you're worried about a video game turning your son or daughter into a killer, don't worry about that,' says psychologist Patrick Markey of Villanova (Pa.) University. 'But is your kid moody, impulsive, or are they unfriendly? It's probably not the best idea to have that child play violent video games.' ... Markey found slight increases in hostility for those with certain personality traits: extremely high on neuroticism and extremely low on agreeableness and conscientiousness. ... 'We found — irrespective of violent content — the two highly competitive games produced more aggressive behavior than the two less competitive games,' [Markey said.]"
"Children's violence is actually the fault of the child and his parents that use games and TV as a babysitter. News at 11." FTFY.
My boys have been pretty much allowed to play any games that they wanted to play from a young age and I never worried about it because I actually sat and taught them how it all works. No mixing up reality and fantasy when you see how you can alter scripts to alter character movements, or tweak a DOOM Wad (dating myself there) to put your name on the walls, or fire up Unreal ED and show them how the different pieces come together to make levels. Did make for some interesting "cursing" from the oldest though. I'd hear things like "Look at the tearing! Who designed this mess? And this AI is a bad joke, I'm clearly in the line of sight! DUCK OR FIRE YOU STUPID SCRIPT!"
But sadly I have picked them up from friends houses when they were younger and saw houses without a single book in them (my mom read "Sci/Fi writers of the 70s" to them like she did to me when I was little, aaww) where they frankly didn't care WHAT the kid did as long as it didn't involve them. Hell their kids could be watching snuff porn for all they knew, as long as the kid wasn't bugging them it was all good as far as they were concerned.
Now while their kids are in dead end crap jobs the oldest is in his second year of pre-med and on the dean's list , and the youngest is trying to decide whether he would prefer to go for something that would help with his love of computer art or go with his love of cooking and be a chef.
Both of them are kind and decent human beings and both only play violent games if they have more than just violence to offer like a compelling story or well made levels. That is what happens when you treat kids like they actually have a mind and give them knowledge and help them develop the ability to decide on their own, you find they actually develop taste and critical thinking skills and judge based on merits, not just how many bodies they can throw in.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I once went to the house of a teacher at the school where I worked, to do an IT job for them. Their child (7/8 years old) was home and playing on the console while I sat at the PC.
It wasn't until *I* mentioned it that she realised that the South Park videogame they were playing lets you launch dildos at the other players. At first, she thought I was joking, then she thought it was just us mis-interpreting it, then she read the instruction manual.
Then she started to actually WATCH South Park with her child and realised that it wasn't just a cartoon for kids. Bear in mind that she would spend every working day herding children and making sure they didn't say anything untoward, or see anything they shouldn't, and she hadn't noticed even though she'd bought the games the kids asked for after seeing the cartoon on TV and they'd been playing them for months.
A lot of parents are fecking idiots. Sure there are some that are deliberately liberal and accommodating, but there are a lot that just don't care / know what their kids are doing. And, no, a violent video game, or even a sexually explicit one, isn't going to harm your child. But the lack of parenting that can result in them doing those things you never realised were available to them can and will harm your child.
That's where the link is - not the games making your child violent or unsociable - its the laxity of parenting that can often result in both things appearing at once. If you're really just buying games for your kids with no question of their content despite their age ratings, that's a parenting problem.
But hell, when I was younger I would watch 18-rated films with my parents - they were never "scary" because it was only a film (i.e. not real life) but it's only my upbringing that taught me that, and when I was that young my parents would *know* what I was watching because they'd have seen it first or had a rough idea of the content of it before they watched it with me.
Game ratings are as useless as film ratings. They only work if the parent is so lazy that they rely on them exclusively. If they are just a lazy parent, they won't even bother to check the age. If your parent knows what they are doing, the age-rating is neither here nor there - they will decide whether or not you get to watch it and not have to read a box on the back of the DVD case, and 99.9% of the time will let you watch it when you are younger than it says.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a well-brought-up child of 11 playing an 18-rated game, or watching an 18-rated movie. So long as they are mature enough to handle it and you KNOW that's what they are doing.
The worst of modern diseases is having no idea what your kids are doing, and not caring even when you do. I bet a lot of those parents that whine about their children becoming violent after playing GrandTheftAuto never bother to mention that their kids were allowed out until all-hours anyway, that they never knew where they were, that they didn't know where the games (or the money to buy them) came from, etc. that the kid has all the latest games consoles but plays in no team sports, etc.
Today, other people are the perfect targets to play for YOUR bad parenting. If you tell your kid to be home at 8, they are home at 8. There is no "but what if" they don't turn up. They *WILL* be home at 8. It's very simple. But nobody bothers to enforce the little things until the big things have already bred in habits.
It's because it's a tested, re-tested, re-verified and oh yes double-blind checked observation that video games increase violent behavior, in the short term, in the long term, in little kids, in big kids, in young adults, in middle aged people, older people and pensioners.
Except not a single one of these studies have proven that. In fact, they are closer to proving that competition irrespective of violent content, is the main motivator for aggressive, not violent behavior. Holy crap, people who play competitive games (sports, video games, board games, whatever) are sometimes aggressive about their competitiveness. Hmm...perhaps competitive people play competitive games. Considering that the only thing that has been shown is a correlation (to aggressiveness, not violent behavior) claiming that they cause violent behavior is a flat out lie.
So can we now please please grow up and assume that, yes, 40 years of testing the same thing (20 years for video games), with every honest psychologist coming again and again to the same conclusion did not result from a desire to steal your tv/video games ?
If you read what the studies actually say, the honest psychologists never claimed that violent media caused violent behavior, only that there is a correlation. The honest ones also showed that video games are not alone, all violent media has roughly the same effect. Games (video, card, board, sports, etc.) are only different in the existence of competitiveness. When it comes to the violent imagery, they are no different that tv, movies, books, comics, etc. Maybe the reason why we've been testing the same thing for 40 years is because everyone THINKS that they must cause it (because they don't want to take responsibility for raising their own children) and they keep re-testing it because they haven't gotten the answer they want yet. Nah, that couldn't be it.....
Note that the actual study indicated that people are very much affected, specifically made violent, by these video games. What the study mostly claimed is that some types of imagined violence had more of an effect than others (big surprise : convincing violence, preferably with some sort of consequence on a real, human, victim, even if it's just a number on his/her screen, evokes more violence than what amounts to showing a picture of some blood).
Except the study said no such thing. The study actually explicitly stated that the violent content in the games doesn't do anything unless you have specific personality traits that could be affected. Newsflash! If your kid has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, don't let them play a violent game. If your kid is already aggressive, violent and moody, don't let them play a violent game. It has nothing to do with the video game causing anything, it just reinforces a pre-existing issue with the person. Violent games will not cause a perfectly normal person to become a violent person. It just doesn't happen and it's not possible. The study actually stated: "We found — irrespective of violent content — the two highly competitive games produced more aggressive behavior than the two less competitive games." So the factor is competitiveness, not violence. And the result is aggressiveness, not violence. Holy crap, people who play competitive games will become aggressive because they are competitive! I never guessed that! Maybe they want to win or something?
This is THE way to politicize science.
Politics refuses to accept the answer that media (whether it's movies, video games, punk rock, comic books, etc.) is just not as influencing of behavior as they like to believe. People need to be able to blame something other than themselves for the perceived "immorality" of young people today. Every time some new media comes around, it is vilified and eventually proven to not be the cause of all of life's woes like people claim. Your post i