Violent Video Games, Weak Statistics And Sensationalistic He

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It seems one of the more controversial areas of study lately surrounds violent video games. It seems like every few months a new study comes out, and the results are always sensationalized, even if the details of the study usually don't add up to very much. Much more telling is the fact that as graphically violent video games have become more popular, incidents of youth violence continue to drop when you would expect it to go the other way. Obviously, this is an area that could use more research -- but so much of it seems to have serious problems. The latest "research" has come out on violent video games, and it's grabbing lots of headlines, claiming that violent video games are linked to "risky behaviors" and increase paranoia. Other headlines point out the "major public health issue" and the "negative impact on youth". Of course, the most sensationalistic claim is that somehow this study suggests violent video games make young males more likely to smoke marijuana. Of course, given that the effects of marijuana are supposed to make people less likely to go out and do stuff, it would seem to go against the view that violent video games lead to actual violence. Either way, it would seem that the press covering this story might want to dig a bit deeper into the facts. The study involves a fairly small sample size (100 young men) to start. Also, the fact that playing such games increases your blood pressure seems sort of obvious. People who are engaged in a video game are likely to have their blood pressure rise. That just means they're really engaged in the game. As for the "leads to pot smoking" claim, this one deserves the most investigation -- and one person who claims to have seen the study (if anyone has a copy, we'd love to check it out) says that what the study actually showed was that both the violent video gaming group and the control group said that marijuana was bad for your health on a six point scale. It's just that the violent video game play group found it slightly less bad. To suggest that this means violent video gamers are more likely to actually engage in such things seems like a huge stretch -- but it sure makes for good headlines.
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I came across this on the internet and found it quite interesting, noticably, This article (check it out, very interesting). My thought is that the media is overhyping the realism of the issue in order to "shock" people into reading their stories. I mean, some of the stuff that people say is simply rediculous.



http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/a ... lence.html

I can't believe anyone could believe this nonsense. Plus, if you read the article I posted above (here) you would see that in fact, the GTA generation is the MOST peaceful generation in 30 years. What do you guys think about this? Overhype or is there really something that's going on?

games have ratings for a reason. why would you get a 5 year old GTA and expect him to know this is just a game? they probably think gang banging is cool. remember PARENTS buy the games for their children and if a child went to a store by himself to buy an R rated game, the employees should want to see a legal guardian before giving them the game.

parents should know what's in the game, check the rating check the pictures on the back, they are there for a reason.
i'll admit i had my 4 year old cousin play COD2 but we were shooting down PLANES not people. when he told his dad that he was playing my game my uncle even told him just don't kill any real people.

parents know that there are real violent games but parents should have a sense of what games their children are playing.

all this junk toward the gaming industry is like suing apple for not having a max volume setting that's safe for public.
does the consumer have the ability to decided is good for them yes, do we americans want to? no. we just want other people to do it for us because we are all lazy fat pigs.

I really HATE people that do this.

Jack Thomson or whatever his name is would be a fine example. Are they seriously going to tell me that a sport like boxing, where you beat the other persons face in is acceptable yet playing a video game where you might happen to shoot something leads to killing, violent behavior AND SMOKING marijuana?

What a load of rubbish. A game DOES NOT affect your decisions or behavior if your son/daughter/husband whatever goes out and kills someone it's because they CHOSE to. People need to stop shifting the blame and accept responsibility.

I get SICK of these idiot parents on tv blaming game company's BECAUSE THEY BROUGHT THEM A GAME RATED 18+ FOR THERE 15 YEAR OLD SON.

I've grown up around these things and I've never been in trouble with the police, never touched illegal substances hell I've only ever been involved in one or two fights in my life and i can't claim i started them.

So all these dam idiots that run surveys can shove it where the sun doesn't shine. They know nothing there just upset cause all they got as a kid was a game of Pong.

So people have started jumping on each other?

Speaking of Jacky...

It appears the strategy of blaming Grand Theft Auto for a crime has failed again. It's the strategy that lawyer Jack Thompson trots out every time there's a crime involving a kid who plays video games, despite plenty of evidence that video games don't increase youth violence. And, of course, it's not just Grand Theft Auto. Thompson is quite worried about the negative effects of such dangerous games as The Sims. Of course, the real issue is that Thompson is trying to take the responsibility off of the individual who actually committed the crime -- and that is a real disservice to society. People need to take responsibility for their actions, and Thompson is trying to remove the responsibility and put it on companies he doesn't like. So far, however, that strategy has pretty much backfired everywhere it's been attempted, and in the latest case, it looks like it's failed again. Instead of blaming the video game, the actual criminal who killed three police officers has been convicted of the crime.

Seems like the politians are using video games to put the blame onto video games. Seems like nobodies responsible for their own actions nowdays, it's always somebody else's fault.

of course not, why do you think we blame so many things on bush?

Ok, you are now one of the stupidest people on this site.

How the **** is a natural disaster his fault?

ehem...ontopic?