Video games don't turn teenagers into psycho killers
Blame the parents instead
A NEW BOOK PUBLISHED by a couple of Harvard boffins reckons that video games are really not to blame if your child turns out to be a deranged and psychotic mass murderer.
The Harvard Medical school husband and wife team, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson, published their study findings in a new book aptly entitled: "Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do". In it, the pair write that that there is really nothing to support all the hysterical allegations about video games corrupting today’s youth.
The study took a somewhat ‘hands on’ approach, with the researchers putting more emphasis on talking to video game playing kids about their feelings, rather than testing them in lab situations.
What the results showed was that in today’s world, most kids found that playing video games was a very social activity, which helped them bond with others and maintain friendship bonds with others.
There was a slight correlation, however, between kids who liked to play “mature-rated games” and aggressive behaviour manifestations, but the researchers were rather quick to point out that it was unclear whether this meant that violent games made kids aggressive, or whether aggressive kids just preferred to play fight games.
The study did point out, however, that amongst girls who chose to play Mature rated games, about 40 per cent had been involved in some sort of physical fight within the last year, compared to only 14 per cent of non mature rated female game players.
The boffins noted that they were surprised to discover how popular the M-Rated games actually were among girls, citing the surprising fact that "Grand Theft Auto" was the second most popular video game for girls after the rather more sissy Sims.
Still, Kutner and Olson were at pains to point out that it was the social context that should ring alarm bells for parents, rather than the game playing itself. For example, Kutner told Reuters that a girl who stays home and plays over 15 hours a week of only violent video games should probably have her parents worried, whereas “for boys (the danger sign) is not playing video games at all, because it looks like for this generation, video games are a measure of social competence for boys." µ
L’Inq
Reuters
Comments
News flash, not.
Wait til we assemble a team of researchers from MIT, to study if the fact tat the earth orbits the sun really makes people anti-religious.Blame video games, blame foreigners, blame the governement, blame the school, blame the weather...just please don't point the finger at bad parenting, that's taboo.
more like sparring
yes and no...If the kids were not violent it will not make them more violent but it will blind them to violence happening around them....But more aggressive kids who need help are just being fed more aggression...and those are the psychotic killers...
Kids need to be taught good outlets for their feelings... talking not just fraging
Personally I play fps...and yes with TS it is a very social activity...and for the males I have to say its not about the killing your friends...its about killing more than your friends....male competition plain and simple.
You missed the part about those that don't play games....
You missed the part of the study/book that mentions the kids to be concerned about are those that do not play any violent games. Those seem to be the abnormal ones, like the VT killer who specifically said he doesn't like playing those type of games. The book was pretty clear about that being the big touch point, whereas you focus on the typical view. It wou;d've been nice had you focused on the truly surprising parts of their writing.But then I guess the "it's always the 'quiet' ones" attitude never tweaks the kneejerk response of 'Concerned Parents for a Better Whatever' crowd.
Hah!
Doom, Quake2 - esp Expert Mod, HL & HL2 turned me into the lean mean killing machine I am today.Don't piss me off if you value your life! I have a necklace of human skulls so long it takes all 200 of my nubile and nude teenage wives to carry it.
AK poiinting at you, sucka!
Oh! FPS's not rap music! 'scuse me...
Ironic title...
Ironic that the title contains "The Surprising Truth" when this is and should be common knowledge already. We shouldn't be surprised that the same failed parents that raise these failed children are the same ones who will find this all so "surprising."oh dear
Well obviously games don't make you violent, and obviously some people that are already a certain way for-real will be attracted to a game where they can do those same things virtually.You only need common sense to work that out.
There's another overlooked variant: there's a type of person that believes that if someone else plays an M-content videogame (or uses any other kind of media featuring adult content) then it means they wish to attract those kinds of scenarios and energies into their actual real-life. And they're the most dangerous psychos of all, cause to think that means they can't tell the difference between fiction and real-life.
Like if your favourite book is War and Peace then it means you secrely want to spend your time in a gulag.
Very questionable conclusion there about boys not being normal if they don't game. Who was their publishing sponsor?
The World's still Learning.
The World isn't very smart yet, so here's a couple of wise comments:"Games don't make people violent, people make people violent. Games are just an anger outlet."
"Hurt people hurt people"
"Media can influence. Everything is Influence but depends on whether they embrace it or deny it."
"Even though we have movies, dialects are not universal because of greater local influences."
"People seem to forget that the world was more brutal before the age of technology."
"Normal people don't gun down schools. There was probably something wrong with the person in the first place."
Blame?
Blame the one who pulls the trigger.More BS
I love how people point the finger at video games and PC games first as well....They take both sides of the issues to make money from it, but hurt each other because each side fuels the other, leaving the gamers in the middle to defend themselves. Both sides can care less about the gamers...and more about the profit made from such statements...There is far more violence in "sex" and "drugs" than there are in video games....and if the government combined with society and corporations along with the LAZY parents who don't do anything about the quality of life going downhill....can complain about VIDEO GAMES and take a side...I feel sorry for the lot of them.
Sorry, but being raised in a society where families have to work 120 hours per week to make ends meet, where SOCIAL-Slavery is present in every outlet and people are convinced that working 40 - 50 years of your life to make the dreams of another come true is "life" is the way of things without any opposition to such social brutality creates a lot of the problems...
Parents simply aren't there for the children and its their fault they didn't stand up to the corporations.
PEOPLE get the government they deserve. If they stand up, they get a better one...If they don't...they get a worse one.
If a child is born in a ghetto and has to live a life where the man to the left will strip the man of the right of all of his food....you can tell there are adults who failed children and society everywhere that you go.