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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!"

4 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Surprise by Mantrid42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Unearned Platforms Given to Moral Guardians by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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