Violent video games OK for kids

[kristus]

Harvard says so.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9942041-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

[Captain Red]

I'd still rather not let kids play stuff like GTA IV.

[Bucket]

Studies show the same thing. People find scenes of explicit violence less offensive than a picture of two men kissing.

[Sharessa]

I remember seeing some graph of youth violence in the past 20 years, and it's actually been decreasing quite a bit. It seems the more violent video games are released, the more it drops too.

[Coopersville]

This is going to be a pretty helpful source in the future. *saved*

[skadoomer]

Isn't Americans that find two men kissing more offensive then violence? Apparently its the other way around in Europe.

[Creaphis]

Danarchy said:

I remember seeing some graph of youth violence in the past 20 years, and it's actually been decreasing quite a bit. It seems the more violent video games are released, the more it drops too.

Yeah, if you know how to dig through the stats on FBI.gov you can confirm this for yourself. Youth crime has been dropping significantly since around the original release of the Playstation. This doesn't prove that gaming reduces crime, of course, but it strongly supports the viewpoint that games do not cause violence.

[Quasar]

skadoomer said:

Isn't Americans that find two men kissing more offensive then violence? Apparently its the other way around in Europe.

Yeah, extreme homophobia is entrenched in all aspects of American culture. Anything from a man touching another man in any way at all to wearing shorts that aren't 8 sizes too large could possibly be "gay." "Fag" and "that's gay" are by far the most common insults. It is still widely believed by soccer moms everywhere that there is a "gay agenda" (a term not at all unlike the "Jewish conspiracy") and that any exposure to homosexuality will "turn kids gay." It is also widely believed that homosexuals are pedophiles, or are at least somehow in league with them. To be gay in America is to be the Devil incarnate, more or less. Naturally these attitudes vary in severity from place to place. But even relatively forward-thinking Oregon, far outside the Bible belt, banned gay marriage (IIRC). My own experiences are colored by where I live (Oklahoma). Here we're about two steps away from a new Dark Age at any given time.

Anyway sorry for the rambling off-topicness. This study confirms everything I already believed :P

[Bloodshedder]

Scroll down to the comments section and find the (long) one by "lkutner", one of the book's co-authors. It's more interesting (and more fact-filled) than the news article itself.

[myk]

You can also read a bit of the book itself if you go to the Grand Theft Childhood site (or, to go directly, here).

[Texas Libra]

Quasar said:

My own experiences are colored by where I live (Oklahoma). Here we're about two steps away from a new Dark Age at any given time.

To contribute to the off-topic-ness, how is Oklahoma itself getting into a new Dark Age?

Just a quick trivial thing related to what you're talking about, I always seem to mistype "Oklahoma" as "Oklahomo" the first time I type it for something. Heehee...

[Quasar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism

[Coopersville]

skadoomer said:

Isn't Americans that find two men kissing more offensive then violence? Apparently its the other way around in Europe.

I think my flamer best friend could vouch for me on this, but if I were just given two pictures that depicted either, and me probably not finding anything offensive about violence in general, I'd probably pick the two men kissing.

[Technician]

It all depends on the violent image to compare with the homoerotism’s one. I mean what if the image was a six year old having his bowls torn out of his stomach with a rusty hook while bleeding to death buy a thousand straight razor inflicted cuts?

But I think we'd all still cringe at the two men kissing and jack off to the two college girls passionately making out.
(Note that I used large amount of sarcasm in this post.)
My belief is as more violent media becomes the norm in regular society with fewer complaints then of course we will gradually become used to it and become less effected by it mentally. It’s like watching allot of stuff today and compare it fifty years ago. People of yester year would have died at some of the shit we watch on daytime cable but we just take it for granted now.

[alexz721]

I find neither offensive.

[NightmareZer0]

HA! IN YOUR FACE JACK THOMPSON!

[40oz]

its been 15 years and now its finally safe to play doom without a guilty conscience

[Enjay]

I dunno, I find Doom very upsetting. All the zombies are male - so they must be fag zombies. Can't say I've ever noticed it being violent though.

:P

[Butts]

how could a picture of gay people be offensive? i dont see how a violent picture is offensive either. i think its kinda fucked up that people are bashing gays.

[Dutch Doomer]

I would let my children play violent video games, and have them watch horror movies instead of the teletubbies.

[MasterOFDeath]

Enjay said:

I dunno, I find Doom very upsetting. All the zombies are male - so they must be fag zombies. Can't say I've ever noticed it being violent though.

:P

Thats nothing, Hexen is the most homoerotic game I've ever seen. Just look at the fighter in all that bondage gear, walking up to similarly dressed monsters as built as he is and just beating on each other...

[VileSlay]

one of the things that gets me is that people don't give kids enough credit for being able to distinguish video game fantasy violence from real world violence. if a kid can't distinguish that, it's not the game makers fault, it's the parents. I think thats what it all boils down to. parents failing it at raising their kids right and blaming movie, music, and video games for it.

as for the gay thing, Quasar got it down pretty good. here in NYC it's a bit more accepted, but there will still be incidents of bashing. it's funny all the conspiracy stuff. people don't want gays to have children, saying that the likelyhood of sexual abuse is high and that they will convert the child to be gay, but studies show the opposite is true.

[Snarboo]

VileSlay said:

if a kid can't distinguish that, it's not the game makers fault, it's the parents.

It's not always the parents' fault. It's possible the child could have a mental illness, in which case it's still the responsibility of the parents to have their child properly treated.

[40oz]

Just to reinforce what snarboo just said, that was the case with Eric Harris. His parents raised him well.

[myk]

It's not always caused by abusive behavior from the parents, but "raising well" is a disputable matter, because not being able to cope with illness is not exactly good stuff. Not being immoral or inconsiderate may be better than being abusive, but it isn't good enough if one is incompetent. Another case of this is Jeffrey Dahmer, whose mother was pretty neurotic and his father a rather feeble-spirited person. Had he been raised by parents with more centered attitudes and stronger wills backed by better support, while still a odd person in some ways, he would perhaps not have been utterly deranged.

[Death-Destiny]

IMHO, violent games are still only games either way. I was already familiar with the research that they do not inspire violent behavior. I have also heard it said that a person like Eric Harris would still have the capacity to commit acts of violence even if he watched nothing but teletubbies through life. There are other much worse psychological factors that influence people to kill others.

[Megaz]

The whole 'Virtual things can influence you' never really struck me as anything but bullshit. Things like the News and Media can influence opinions a lot easier than a killing spree on GTA or whatever. Say if there was a war between country X and country Y and global media coverage all pointed out country Y as the 'evil' country, then everyone would loathe Country Y. If there was a game about it, no-one would really give two shits.

[Csonicgo]

I knew this whole concept was bullshit the moment I realised that kids could play Mortal Kombat and whoop my ass in it, and then go back to their parents and live normal lives. Maybe he realises, even at his age, it's just fantasy and not real. Perhaps that's what Thompson forgets. People aren't stupid. They may make stupid decisions, but they know what reality is.

And to think I used to give them some sort of credibility-- but when I found out the "most abusive" videos of "video game violence" there were was... STAGED, I realised I'd been had.


EDIT: after reading the co-author's post, it makes much more sense to me now. Kids that are more prone to violence play violent video games, but that doesn't mean the games did it, they're just undisciplined stupids.

[alexz721]

Actually, the author never said it was one or the other. Correlation does not imply causation. If you ever take a statistics class, this phrase will be bored into your skull repeatedly.

This study basically came to the same conclusion a lot of other studies have. There's a correlation between aggression and violent media, but no one knows yet if it's because these kids are more prone to violence or if it's because they've been affected by these violent media.

Honestly, I think studying biological brain development is the next step to figuring this shit out. Or at least some kind of longitudinal study.

[Death-Destiny]

Quite honestly, this could be the other way around. Kids who are already prone to violence may be more inclined to participate in violent media because it is a portrayal of their way of thinking. However, I certainly don't think that whatever you read of watch will automatically control your opinions and beliefs, and therefore think this correlation only goes one way.