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Study Suggests Violent Video Games May Make Teens Less Violent
barlevg writes "A new paper is out in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence which shows no positive correlation between playing violent video games and acts of aggression. The study of 377 children with attention deficit and depressive symptoms in fact showed a slight negative correlation between video game-playing and aggressive behavior such as bullying, which the researchers posit is due to the games awarding some measure of catharsis. The full paper is available online (PDF)."
Games are a good outlet for stress and frustration. I'd argue a game is a constructive activity as there are things you can learn from video games.
Of course they make people less violent.
People react differently to different things. This shouldn't come as a surprise. For some people violent video games increase stress, for some they lower it. Some people find driving stressful, others find it relaxing. Applying the video game debate to driving: because some drivers have had road rage and have caused accidents as a result some of which led to fatalities, we should ban driving in favor of catching carts driven by those who want to ban violent video games. Any volunteers? (We'd also be contributing to fixing the obesity plague)
To steal a quote from Wikipedia about my favorite Moral Panic:
In the 1771 German novel Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim by Sophie von La Roche, a high-minded character complains about the newly introduced waltz among aristocrats thus: "But when he put his arm around her, pressed her to his breast, cavorted with her in the shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans and engaged in a familiarity that broke all the bounds of good breeding - then my silent misery turned into burning rage."
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Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.