Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK (arstechnica.com)

A study reported on by Ars Technica indicates that video games, much ballyhooed (alleged) source of mental, physical and psycho-social ills for the kids who spent a lot of time playing them, don't seem to have had quite as big a negative effect on those kids as the moral panic of the past few decades would have you believe. Instead, There didn't seem to be an association between the number of games the children reported owning and an increase in risk for conduct disorder. When examining depression among shoot-em-up players, there was evidence for increased risk before the researchers controlled for all the confounding factors, but not afterwards. Of course, there's a lot of data to go around in the several studies referred to here, and the upshot seems to both less exciting and less simple than "Video games are good, not bad!"

Comments

Paging Jon Katz...

[Etcetera]

In regard to social issues, I do like that Slashdot is getting back to its roots at least! :)

Surprise

[Mantrid42]

Just like the kids who grew up on metal, and comic books, and rock 'n roll, etc.

Re: Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

The ones who don't turn out okay are mostly the kid who was not loved unconditionally and comforted in times of distress.

Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians

[Kunedog]

There's a reason people dismiss claims of IRL "harm" the from Tipper Gores or Jack Thompsons or Anita Sarkeesians of the world. The burden of proof is always squarely on them, they almost always fail to meet it, and years later we (as often as not) get scientific evidence showing the opposite.

Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians

[Anonymous Coward]

Anita's butt video is a fine exercise of cherry picking and insane conspiracy theory nonsense. Nobody actually holds a board room meeting conspiring how to hide male butts, I'm pretty sure that the decision of giving Batman his cape was due to the fact that he is a character who is iconic for having a bloody cape but don't quote me on that. Not to mention that one of the DLCs for the very same game does give quite nice view of his ass. Her argument completely jumps the shark once she starts talking about how hard it is to see his ass, as if she doesn't understand how capes work.

There are many male characters across many video games who do have prominent tight-fitting clothing and many female characters who do wear capes or less form-fitting clothing. Just in the superhero genre, you have most X-men, Spider-man, Green Lantern, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, etc...

I'm not even going to get into the whole deal of how real-life females do tend to wear more form-fitting clothing than males and how one should control for the influence of gender dismorphism when it comes to portrayal of human characters, suffice to say that Anita offers to argument there because she tends to exercise the academic rigor expected of middle school students.

Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians

[Mashiki]

Well considering she's the one claiming it's 100% one way. Never mind all those fashion magazines, or romance novels either. She's just another scam artist, the fact that she refuses to debate anyone even when offered 5 figures or the donation of that money to the charity of her choice should tell you a lot. Even Jack Thompson would debate people after he was called out. He looked like an idiot, but that's more then what she's done.

Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians

[Mashiki]

I wish people would watch Sarkeesian's videos (or read the transcripts) before making assumptions about what she says.

You mean the part where she says that "everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic" or the part where she starts whining because it doesn't cater to her political ideology and she gets upset over it and goes running to the UN?

Yeah, she's no different then Jack Thompson...except for her gender. Which get's her a free pass where any criticism is labeled has harassment.

Note that she doesn't need to offer "proof" for her opinion that portraying women (and men) better in games is the right thing to do. She is a feminist, her position is backed up by decades of feminist theory, and you can debate it all you like. She isn't making a falsifiable hypothesis, she is stating an opinion based on a large body of widely accepted philosophical work.

No, she needs to offer proof. The second she claimed she wanted to make the series to be included in the classroom and for educational purpose. And the second she decided that she wanted to go speak before crowds. She's wants to spew her stuff, but doesn't want anyone to turn around and call her out on her bullshit.

Results are skewed?

[dsmatthews9379]

They didn't even get to ask the ones who are dead or still in prison did they? What happened to the other 2/3 when they started the study? Even with the people that did respond there is a clear pattern of puzzle games being increasingly more popular over violent types as the person's education level rises.

I am not sure what to make of it all but I am still glad I installed these games on all the machines on my LAN, http://www.chiark.greenend.org...

Me as an example

[future assassin]

I'm doing ok, I got a successful retail business and I got pretty straight morals, yes I've done things as a teenage that makes my kids and others go WTF? But that's another time and place in history.

We use to play TONS of video games, believe it or not we actually walked in snow and -10+ temps for 30-45 min each way to the closest video game rental place (Overwaitea Food). One day a few buddies of mine came over and asked me to stash some Nintendo machines and box on top of boxes of games. I sure as hell didn't mind as my eye and thumbs twitches at the gloriousness that will be happening to me in the next few week of my teenage life. I truly had a Nintendo thumb and 3 hours of sleep for weeks. Well it turned out fine for me and majority of my friends.