Kids and Video Games- A Study

[MJS]

Some interesting research in this article.

Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.
Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, a husband-and-wife team at Harvard Medical School, detail their views in "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," which came out last month and promises to reshape the debate on the effects of video games on kids.
"What I hope people realize is that there is no data to support the simple-minded concerns that video games cause violence," Kutner told Reuters.

 

[Sukerkin]

It may be that playing GTA IV doesn't turn a child into a killer but the bare research shows almost a doubling in aggressive behaviour - that's hardly insignificant.

Moral compasses take a while to inculcate and the process is hampered by violent gaming, especialy that which emphasises criminal behaviour.

 

[Makalakumu]

No, it probably doesn't turn the average kid into a zombie maniac thirsting for blood, but I think it does desensitize kids to images of violence. How is a kid going to react when they see the real thing? I often wonder if graphic photos would affect kids now days like they would before video games.

 

[exile]

Here is the kind of thing that makes me look a bit coldly at the premises of this book. Col. David Grossman is known to many of us here as an expert on the psychology of violence and military training to enhance the ordinary soldier's capacity for violence; he was employed while in the military as a specialist in densitizing programs for new recruits to make them more willing to kill enemy soldiers without hesitation under battlefield conditions—no easy task, historically, as he documents in his book On Killing, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and uniquely based, as far as I know, on an insider's view of training against the grain that he amply documents in records going back to the Civil War: the reluctance to shoot to kill, even when one's own life is on the line. (Drew Faust's new book, This Republic of Suffering, about the realities of death and attitudes towards death and killing in both the North and South, in both the military and civilian worlds, amply corroborates Grossman's statements that neither Union nor Conferdate soldier killed easily, even under intense enemy fire, and could not actually be counted on to kill on command, a pattern he also corroborates for WW I, II and if I recall, Korea and Vietnam). To counter this innate aversion, the military assigned Grossman and other applied psychologists who had studied the human response violence to devise countertechnologies which would expedite the erosion of those inhibitions, and what Grossman reports is that he and other experts found video drill routines, of a kind eerily like those in some of the most violent commercial games, to be amongst the most effect 'reprogramming' tools available. Crude versions of the same kinds of video-based programming tools were used, apparently with considerable success, by the Japanese military amongst their own conscripts.

Grossman's point is that he and other consultants, seeking practical methods to enhance the average soldier's readiness to commit deadly violence reliably, predictably and remorselessly, found video training tools—tools essentially indistinguishable from many commerical games—to be absolutely invaluable in achieving their goals. I'd be very curious to see what the authors of this book have to say, in the face of that kind of expert testimony.

 

[MJS]

I found the article interesting, especially in the beginning when they said the game won't turn kids into blood thirsty killers, but midway down, it states that 51% of males that play 'violent' games had been in a fight withing the past year. So basically while there is some violent actions, its not on a high level.

Then again, it is, IMHO, part of how you were raised. Today we can't turn on the TV without seeing some sort of violence, so video game or not, people are exposed to it all the time. Is someone watching to see how their kids act after playing these games? In other words, if you let your kid play GTA and he starts running around acting like the people in the game, you have a choice...let him continue to do it or make a correction. Seperating reality from fantasy is important IMO.

 

[Grenadier]

They're pretty much right about that.

The way I see it, if your kid goes out and wastes people after playing Grand Theft Auto, then there was something already wrong with him to begin with, and that he would have done this eventually anyways. If not one of the GTA games, then perhaps someone will try to blame DOOM again, or some other violent game, like they did with the Columbine killers.

It's not the game / movie / book that has a sense of right and wrong. It's the person.

I can remember watching all of the Charles Bronson "Death Wish" movies, when I was a kid, and enjoyed the entertainment value. Despite having watched such "atrociously violent movies" (as some stupid critics put it), the number of vigilante killings I've committed remains lower (no killings, so don't worry, this isn't a confession of vigilante activity) than the number of women drowned to death by a certain sodden Massachusetts senator's car.

 

[Grenadier]

I found the article interesting, especially in the beginning when they said the game won't turn kids into blood thirsty killers, but midway down, it states that 51% of males that play 'violent' games had been in a fight withing the past year. So basically while there is some violent actions, its not on a high level.

I wouldn't really put much worry into the 51% detail. Boys will be boys, and many of them are going to get into fights. After all, I'm sure most of the guys here have, at one time or another, got into at least a bit of a shoving match during their K-12 years, which could also be considered a "fight."

 

[MJS]

They're pretty much right about that.

The way I see it, if your kid goes out and wastes people after playing Grand Theft Auto, then there was something already wrong with him to begin with, and that he would have done this eventually anyways. If not one of the GTA games, then perhaps someone will try to blame DOOM again, or some other violent game, like they did with the Columbine killers.

It's not the game / movie / book that has a sense of right and wrong. It's the person.

I can remember watching all of the Charles Bronson "Death Wish" movies, when I was a kid, and enjoyed the entertainment value. Despite having watched such "atrociously violent movies" (as some stupid critics put it), the number of vigilante killings I've committed remains lower (no killings, so don't worry, this isn't a confession of vigilante activity) than the number of women drowned to death by a certain sodden Massachusetts senator's car.

Great post!! Likewise, I watched Death Wish, as well as just about every Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St, Halloween movie that was put out, and I never ran thru my neighborhood with a knife, hacking my neighbors, their kids or their pets.

 

[Empty Hands]

...it states that 51% of males that play 'violent' games had been in a fight withing the past year.

Yeah, as it stands, that's pretty much useless. I was in fights as a kid, and I played violent video games...point proved, right? Well, I didn't start any of those fights. Perhaps the article does, but you also don't mention the percentage for those who don't play violent video games (if you can find any!).

 

[Marginal]

It may be that playing GTA IV doesn't turn a child into a killer but the bare research shows almost a doubling in aggressive behaviour - that's hardly insignificant.

Aggressive behavior tends to be a very loose term in those studies. A kid shouts, demonstrates any form of excitement whatsoever etc, that's aggressive!

 

[MJS]

Yeah, as it stands, that's pretty much useless. I was in fights as a kid, and I played violent video games...point proved, right? Well, I didn't start any of those fights. Perhaps the article does, but you also don't mention the percentage for those who don't play violent video games (if you can find any!).

Upon a quick glance, I saw this. Not quite sure if this is the data you're looking for.

"But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51 percent of boys who played M-rated games — the industry's equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up — had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 percent of non-M-rated gamers."

I take all the stats with a grain of salt anyways. IMHO, things like this tend to fall back on the blame game. "My kid listened to hard rock and metal music and it made him kill himself!" Umm...what we never or rarely hear about is what kind of home life the kid had, was he depressed, was he bullied in school?

Like I said, I take all stats with a grain of salt.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

All the latest scientific research CLEARLY shows that approximately 99.74 percent of statistics are made up on the spot.

 

[Gordon Nore]

Thanks for this thread, MJS. The book goes on my summer reading list. As a parent and a teacher, I'm not invested in defending games like GTA; however, I have found the argument that video games or violent television lie behind youth violence very unsatisfying.

I typically hear elementary teachers say, "Johnny spent the entire night watching Freddy Kruger, and I can't get him to focus or talk about anything else." I understand that -- it's a total pain for a teacher. As a parent, I don't think that's appropriate viewing for young children. But the focus of the discussion is on content, and that's where I think we've missed the mark.

Rather, what I see are children who are unceremoniously dropped in front of a TV screen for hours on end. Is it really necessarily better that those hours are spent playing Super Mario Brothers or watching educational program? My concerns are about abandonment, loneliness, boredom, and frustration. I think the repetitiveness and lack human contact in and of themselves are unhealthy and counter-productive.

Whether or not any of that leads to violence I don't know, but I think it damages social skills.

 

[Big Don]

Playing video games does not turn children into deranged, blood-thirsty super-killers, according to a new book by a pair of Harvard researchers.

Of course it doesn't. If it did then wouldn't training in martial arts also lead to more violence?