Video Games Linked To Child Aggression 500
the4thdimension writes "CNN is running a story this morning that explains new research showing a correlation between video games and aggression in children. The study monitored groups of US and Japanese children, asking them to rate their violent behavior over a period of several months while they played video games in their free time. The study concludes that it has 'pretty good evidence' that there is a link between video games and childhood aggression." Stories like this make me want to smash things.
Aggression or mimicry? (Score:5, Interesting)
Video games are violent, per the majority. For most, the point of a game is to kill other people. I'm an avid game player of Xbox and Wii, and my four year old has his games that he plays (Simpsons, The Bee Movie game, Kung Fu Panda). Last year we noticed that when I was playing Zelda on the Wii, he loved to mimic my actions. He started collecting "swords" and "shields" out of anything at hand and would play fight. Every now and then we watched me play Lost Odyssey, where the characters run up to the mob, attack, and run back (and that's how he named the game - "the one where you run up and hit the bad guy and run back"). When I fought, he would orchestrate himself fighting our chair with a sword.
Even when the game is over and unplayed for months, he would still act out those movements. Is he aggressive? He's a child, and he does have aggressive tendencies like all other boys. The point of this article: can it be pinned on the games? I doubt it. Just as young boys are attracted to guns, army guys, and fighting, he is attracted to games that have him fighting people - even if it's just jumping on their heads.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, IMO.
Then again, I think there are many parents out there who expect their kids to be little adults. They want them to shut up, sit down, be quiet, and follow strict rules. And, when the kids act like kids, the parents stretch for something to blame for them being "unruly". When ritalin isn't helping, let's blame the video games. IMO
Consistent with my own experience (Score:5, Interesting)
The results are consistent with my own experience. When my older son was younger, I provided him with access to an NES emulator so that he could play the old Nintendo games I had sitting in the closet. (I was missing cabling and didn't find them until later.) What we noticed is that if he was allowed to play video games for too long, he became a) lazy about doing anything else and b) very temperamental and difficult to deal with.
About that time my wife instituted a time-limit for games each day that my son could spend at any time during the day. when he wasn't playing games, he was required to find some other activity to do. (e.g. play with Duplos, ask to go to the park, etc.) This change was very effective in smoothing out his behavior.
The problem does not appear to be the violence in video games as Mr. Thompson, no longer esquire, would have you believe. The problem appears to be that playing games for a long period of time results in a lot of pent-up energy. That energy is tempered by a reduced desire to perform any task besides play video games. In result, the energy ends up expended via a behavior route.
Re:Didn't we figure this out already? (Score:4, Interesting)
While there is likely a link, it does not mean that playing violent video games means you kill people. Many will try to jump to this conclusion, many will fail.
Common Sense prevails (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not a psychologist but it seems to me there isn't anyone I know, adult or child, that doesn't get frustrated when interrupted from doing something they enjoy or not progressing like they want while playing a video game. The only difference is that a child isn't mentally equipped to deal with the frustration, which is just pent up aggression, so they express it directly. Do we really need these studies? If your kid gets out of line, take his/her "stuff" away and beat the stew out of them, game over. My kid is an avid gamer and she knows if she crosses the line she's going to meet my belt on the other side.
Re:Lack of activity and aggression (Score:3, Interesting)
That's exactly my experience [slashdot.org]. It has nothing to do with violence in video games and everything to do with sitting on their butts while getting more and more excitable.
As a long-time gamer... I believe it. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always believed that violent games cause agression in children. No doubt about it. Hell, I can tell that I'm more agressive after a marathon of gaming violence.
The problem is that these kids aren't taught what to do with that agression, and so they bring it out into the real world. Kids need to be taught that, in real life, hurting someone and looting their stuff isn't okay.
And parents and teachers are, more and more, not doing that.
Re:I like violent music... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could you clarify this distinction you make between the passive aggression of listening to pantera and active aggression that video games 'are'?
Does this mean passively watching violent movies is also passive aggression? And killing a mosquito is active aggression?
It sounds more like personal preference to me, clad in nice sounding terms.
It's been shown in many sound social psychological studies over decades that in children there is a strong correlation between watching violent tv and aggressive behavior, between playing violent video-games and aggressive behavior and between listening to aggressive music and aggressive behavior.
Go google (google scolar) yourself or look it up on wikipedia.
--There has never been any study proving a causal relationship between these (with behavior being the dependent factor) where the effect lasts for more than a few minutes. --
The catharsis theory ("I go to martial arts school so I don't have to be violent at home", "I listen to pantera once I'm at home so I can be more calm when I'm at work") is a Freudian theory disproved ages ago as well. I'm sure people can peruse the relevant social and personality psychology literature themselves on this. (journal of personality and social psychology, etc. )
Re:Lack of activity and aggression (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lack of activity and aggression (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. I used to be surly, irritable and aggressive. Thankfully my parents are both teachers, so we'd go on 6 week long summer holidays in a caravan without a computer.
I remember being restless and agitated for the first couple of weeks of the holiday and then when the brain fog cleared I realised that computer games were doing something weird to my head. It wasn't necessarily about the level of violence in the games themselves, but maybe more something to do with the mental processes involved.
HAL.
Re:Gee, no shit tag needed for this story (Score:2, Interesting)
Peer group is at least as important as family. Probably more.
From Experience (Score:2, Interesting)
This is somewhat true. Basically we took our 5 year old off games, and it helped somewhat. Games would make him increasingly more frustrated, inevitably leading to angry outbursts and crying etc. If, upon hearing this, I went and turned the game off, the he'd usually go ballistic, but really because I hadn't interceded earlier. I'm not talking about violent games (which we don't let him play), I'm talking about ANY competitive game.
So cutting out games does help, but here's the interesting thing - if his lego set (and what's more wholesome than lego?) keeps breaking and his frustration level increases and he would eventually become almost as upset...though not to the same extent as a game might.
So the real solution here is PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. If I see that he's not in a mood conducive to playing reasonably, I need to remove the trigger before it becomes an issue.
Now there's no way I'd let him play graphically violent video games, period. That's just stupid. Like if he sees a tame movie with fight scenes you've just put it in his head to try punching and kicking his 1 year old brother, even if there's no malevolence behind it. And it seems to make him hyper. And exposing him to simulations of shooting people over and over, may or may not have long term effects. I'm inclined to think that there's at least some negative side effects. Heck I can play some racing games long enough and when I get i the car, there's just that tiny hint of unreality, quickly expunged by my rational mind. But if he finds a gun or something when he gets older and he's not grown up, what do you think the logical progression is going to be? Plus hurting virtual people constantly will probably retard his development of empathy over time.
But again, we can't just let him do whatever he wants all the time it leads to unhealthy (or heck downright dangerous) situations. So if I just sit back and let him play and play and go ballistic (while I play my own video games heh), the fault is not the game, it's my parenting.
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:5, Interesting)
I have 5 kids, went through the age where they believed we could not touch them. During one heated argument, they said they would call the police. I said, tell you what, let me do it.
So I called our local police, and the office came in and told the kids what I could do and what I could not do. And they also said if I needed it, they would taze them a few times for me, so I would not get in trouble ...
Discipline problems went away after that.
Re:Aggression or mimicry? (Score:2, Interesting)
He started collecting "swords" and "shields" out of anything at hand and would play fight.
Ya, we did that when we were kids too. We used to beat each other with sticks and get into rock-throwing fights, and generally cause a scene.
Oh, and we didn't have any video games, Pong wasn't even invented yet. We got our ideas the old-fashioned way: we either made them up, learned them from other kids, or even (gasp!) read about them in books.
All in all, it is pretty obvious that video games themselves don't "make kids violent". But if the only stimulus your child receives is blood & gore hack 'n slash video games, then ya they probably are going to act on that. Just like they will be more violent & aggressive if you take them out & play football in the yard all day, every day.
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:1, Interesting)
I think it is great that the parents are called upon to discipline their children. We should do the same thing in public schools. Unfortunately, public schools can't refuse to take kids back.
When my kids would act up in a public place, we immediately went out to the car for "a talk". Once they understood that actions had consequences, they could decide if the action was worth the consequence.
Freedom -- Responsibility -- Consequences; if kids don't learn this at home when the consequences are delivered by loving parents, they will get to learn them in the not so friendly world...
Two words -- John Rosemond...
Re:Video Games, TV, or Parents? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where are you from? I'd love to see streets with full-length railings as opposed to the present system here in the Chicago area, which is to install speed bumps so that anyone who dares to drive anything close to the speed limit is guaranteed to destroy the underside of their car. Sure, I could drive in more main travel routes but, then again, horrible traffic congestion if the reason I'm driving on the back-roads in the first place. Of course, speed bumps aren't uncommon in other parts of the country, but around here they don't like those pesky large yellow diamond signs or the yellow stripes on the bump itself (I'm assuming that they're scared it'll drop property values). Instead they don't bother with the sign and use white paint to draw the stripes on the bump. So, when you're driving down a residential street with the light streaming between the leaves, the white lines on the speed bumps turns into a pseudo-camouflage and, again, you end up driving over the speed bump at (heaven forbid) the speed limit.
Basically, parents are, almost by definition, selfish. They think that everyone else around them should make concessions because they decided to procreate and don't want to have to be responsible for parenting or, in the case of parents taking screaming babies to movies, restaurants, etc., miss out on things they got to do when they didn't have kids. Heaven forbid you tell them that roads exist for cars to drive on and, if they want a place for little Jimmy and Janey to play then they need to get off their asses and take them to a park (in a city, in the suburbs/country they have larger lawns). We're dealing with people who, because of choices they made are likely to be suffering from lack of sleep and exhaustion so they are, by the nature of their position, less likely to be competent to make decisions regarding public policy.
This attitude flows into the world of retail as well. Not only don't parents want to be responsible for controlling their children's' access to money (then they'd have to listen to the kids whine and, right now, they can use the money to shut them up for a bit), but they don't even want to be bothered researching what kinds of items they directly buy for their kids. If parents were, in any way, reasonable about this issue, then there wouldn't be a problem anymore as we already have a clearly designed labeling system for the maturity of content in games.
The problem is, as far as everything I've ever seen, there is no evidence that strongly supports this. Everything is hearsay and garbage studies. Why does it "probably have an effect"? I think that almost everyone who thinks that way does so because society tells him or her so. It's a self-serving cycle with no, actual, evidence to support it. We've been fed this false premise for decades or longer and most people believe it, to some extent, because it is a form of group-think. Before we do anything that impedes the rights of the game developers or retailers we should require hard evidence. Anything less from people like lazy parents, politicians, or conservative activists should be met with a healthy STFU.
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand the need for clear, credible discpline and I want to be sympathetic to your point of view.
But I must say, every time -- every single time -- that I have seen a parent spank, public or private, the parent has been obviously emotionally agitated and acting out of anger. I'm not saying that these people don't have a right to raise their children the way they choose, and I'm sure there really are parents who spank thinking only of the child's needs (as opposed to the parent's need to express anger). The trouble is, as long as pro-spankers seem to be saying that spanking = good and more spanking = better, instead of discussing the merits of good spanking vs. bad spanking, it becomes more difficult to accept their arguments. Over time I think this erodes the credibility of corporeal punishment as a legitimate means of parenting.
I'm sure that all discpline must inflict pain of some sort (physical or otherwise), and so it's possible for almost any discpline tactic to be abusive if misused. However, humans are strongly wired to hit things when frustrated, and children should not be physical targets of frustration (with discpline as a mere excuse).
Re:I like violent music... (Score:4, Interesting)
Where to begin?
One does not make a valid sample.
How do you know what you would have been like if you hadn't been listening to said violent music?
What makes you think this is short term reaction thing only? In other words, might you me more violent all the time as a result of your listening habits?
How do we know you self diagnosis is accurate?
How do we know you are telling the truth?
As usual it isn't the quality of the argument on slashdot that gets the mod-ups, it's hearing what we want. I wonder if we vote that way too.
Oh, this isn't a criticism of the original poster. I think I have made these arguments to when I was younger but I have come to realize that the world is a much bigger place made up of people very different from me. I have also come to realize my actions are not viewed by others as I view them myself.
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:3, Interesting)
I am a teacher and I often have students who have terrible behavior but my hands are tied, I am not allowed to punish them, yell at them or give them time outs because if I do and the children go to the parents and complain, then the parents start complaining to my boss that I am being the bad guy because "their kids would do nothing wrong, they are angels" and the boss tends to favor the parents because are the ones paying money and shit like that.
Parents love to blame the schools for whenever their kids pull shit because we are the ones who are supposed to "educate" them and teach them about life but when we do want to teach them some limits they come crashing down that we are harming their children. Well f*ck the parents, and the kids then.
Re:Common Sense prevails (Score:2, Interesting)
As for comparing your child to a puppy, if it's a pet you wanted maybe a child was not the best choice.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well in the real world, I think you're going to find that giving an accurate definition of stupidity is a very hard thing indeed. There isn't a single act or course of action that is always stupid, there isn't a single one that is always smart.
This goes into extremes : killing can be stupid, not killing can be even more stupid.
Working to your own advantage is, in reality, not something humans do. Instead they imitate others. Since the only ones you see in the street and around you are people that are actually alive, imitating them should be a good approximation to a tactic that keeps you alive. Natural selection will take care of "weeding" out the unwanted behaviors, and will do so very quickly at times. However during "economic growth" feedback will be much less, and many stupidities will become very popular indeed, for they are not (yet) weeded out. However, every last time, again and again, the time will come when growth slows, and stupidity is wiped out by nature.
Oh wait ... we've disabled and destroyed natural selection in humans (or rather the post WWII generation has). Well then extremely large numbers of people will start acting stupid (since most random courses of action are stupid, given no feedback, stupid courses of action will, by shear numbers, overwhelm intelligent ones).
Since people's behavior is merely a variation, perhaps a combination of other people's behavior, obviously violent video games cause violent responses in real situations, in fact that is a very direct consequence ("to give you an interesting life" so to speak, that "interesting" always seems to include violence is another indication). Even people who think they can separate games from reality (and they may very well pay lip service to that idea) will in practice be influenced into more violent courses of action.
And then you might say "but what about rational reactions of people ?". Well, they exist, obviously, but they are merely people imitating others. Responding rational is something that needs to be taught to children, it's not there "by default" (as any parent knows).
Another indication that this is the case is to compare just how good we are at imitating people versus how good we are at rational thought. We all know that every last human is an expert at imitation and that very few indeed are even moderately good at rational thought : It took humans about 20 centuries to realize that 1-1=0, and since then everyone considers the idea beyond trivial. It took another 5 centuries to realize that negative numbers are useful.
So how do we learn, really ? Well simple : any tought pattern, while copied by imitation, gets weeded out by nature if it is "too stupid", by decimating the population that is "too stupid". This, in reality, can be taken to be quite literally. Most religions, for example, including islam and just about every last natural religion were decimated when they failed to adapt to their surroundings. Examples that are completely extinct include the mayans, "real" islam (with the caliphate), incas, many african religions. It doesn't happen quite the way things seem to happen : the signs of an ideology dieing isn't a slow decrease in numbers, but rather violent shifts in numbers.
What you see when a religion or ideology is about to be destroyed is a really "unstable" number of adherents. It grows and falls in a few short years by literally millions upon millions. It becomes a "fashion" type of thing. One year there's a billion of them, 5 years later 10 million, another 10 years and there's 2 billion. And then, nobody really saw it coming, and it hits "zero" adherents, and doesn't recover. Oops ... bye (the same reason that e.g. huge rabbit populations have a habit of very, very suddenly dissapearing and appearing. Their numbers are very, very unstable. They enlarge too fast, thereby also shrinking too fast. At one point their numbers in an area hit 0, and they're gone, since after 0, there can be no more recovery*)
Slow, controlled,
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Craig Anderson sees "aggression" everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
They write, "'Aggression' also is defined differently by behavioral scientists than by the general public. Social and developmental psychologists typically define 'aggression' as behavior that is intended to harm another person who is motivated to avoid that harm. In other words, aggression is an act conducted by 1 person with the intent of hurting another person; it is not an emotion, thought, or intention." (e1068)
However, in the next paragraph they contradict the statement that agression "is not an emotion, thought, or intention" when they state, "Existing experimental studies demonstrate that playing a violent video game causes an immediate increase in aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions." (e1068)
So does "aggression" include thoughts or emotions or not?
Regardless, both the Japanese and the USA groups involved self-reporting of "aggression" which puts the results in doubt and there's no information on why the participants in each group were chosen (the Japanese group was actually data from another study) so there's no way of knowing if games make kids more aggressive or if aggressive kids play more games.
Finally, the study was funded in part by the National Institute on Media and the Family (e1070) which also calls the results into question since they are an outspoken group about the evils of videogames.
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. There's a clear difference between disciplining one's kid and telling him he's a worthless good-for-nothing, and that he'd be better off dead. The former makes him a better person. The latter will turn him into a poor excuse of a human being, blaming everyone for each of his problems.
You're also hitting the nail on the head on #4 (well, that's a bit obvious with the tag "correlationisnotcausation"). If a kid has murderous intentions and wants to take revenge upon the world, he will get grand theft auto and start killing everyone on the game.
On the contrary, if a kid has a healthy psychological condition, he'll enjoy GTA, but because of the normal gaming elements.
I had a friend whose life was a mess, his father beat him, his mother abandoned him and the people he had to live with kept saying he was useless. His favorite videogames were GTA, Hitman 3, and other violent videogames - including Street Fighter, where I totally kicked his ass :P -. He often gets in streetfights, occasionally beats someone on the street because he felt like it, and one time he tried to commit suicide.
He went once with a psychologist and things have been improving for him, but he gets kicked out of jobs often (guess why). Are videogames the cause of his violent behavior? I don't think so.
But "abused and neglected kid becomes violent" isn't a headline as catchy as "kid who played GTA becomes violent".
Re:parents are becoming afraid to discipline (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed.
Children need consistency. They'll push the boundaries, but it's especially then they need to know that you aren't budging. They should know what is going to happen to them when they do something. Instead, many parents let something go on unchecked and then explode with anger.
Parents should have certain offenses that get a spanking. For my children, its lying in order to get out of trouble. I always want the punishment for just owning up to a fault to be less than trying to lie and get out of trouble. In my mind, this reinforces the concept of personal accountability. If you mess up, own up to it. If you don't own up to it, then that's when things go really badly. After each time I spank them, I hug them and reassure them of my love. That's what usually makes them cry and feel bad for what they've done, and that's exactly what you want: remorse.
Not being perfect, I have spanked my children out of anger and will probably continue to do so at times. But I *always* regret that later. But as bad as that is, people always complement me on my well behaved children. I'd rather err on the side of giving them a bad spanking every once in a while (read: the exception and not the rule) than having children run amok.
I think you never see the proper use of spankings because that doesn't tend to happen in public. A parent has to be pretty angry to spank a child in public, and that's exactly when NOT to use a spanking. What you don't see are the good spankings administered in private.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:5, Interesting)
They did.
The violence has always been there. What is missing now is respect for authority. The respect was what kept a lid on the violence and kept it hidden. You used to have to isolate someone in a bathroom. Now you can just beat the shit out of them in the halls.
My son got suspended when a group ganged up on him. Non of the gang-bangers were punished. He said something they didn't like, so he was being 'disrespectful'. The lesson there was that it is ok to force your will on someone, as long as you can demonstrate that they did something you didn't like.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm... where to begin...
1. You confuse biological selection with cultural selection.
2. Natural selection is still very much at work in human beings.
3. Human survival is largely irrelevant to cultural selection. So long as the idea survives, it matters little how many people die because of its stupidity. The idea that cats were affiliated with the devil outlasted the bubonic plague, although it killed whole towns by removing the one predator that might kill the disease carrying rats.
4. Almost no idea, with the exception of simple and precise mathematical proofs, are transmitted unchanged. This applies especially to religion. Nearly all American Christians, transported to Europe 400 years ago, would quite correctly be convicted of heresy, and probably executed.
5. The currently politically strident brand of Christianity in America has existed for less than 150 years; ideas like the rapture, dominionism, dispensationalism, etc, are fringe inventions of the 19th century that have gained popularity. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say it has lasted less than 50 years, as some of its tenets were first formulated in the 70's. There is no reason to believe that this mixture of ideas, in the mind of someone in control of nuclear weapons, is a stable configuration.
5. The boom-bust cycle you mention is the result of unopposed population growth in a limited ecology, not the result of stupidity per se or fashion. Rabbits in Australia aren't following fashions or being idiots--they just don't have predators. Secular societies seem capable of avoiding this collapse by limiting birth rates; religious societies don't seem to limit birthrates.
6. Ideas do not suddenly collapse--the regimes that enforce them do. Nobody in the East Bloc believed in Communism in 1990. That's why it vanished when the wall fell.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:2, Interesting)
I was spanked repeatedly as a child
...which suggests that you didn't learn the first time. Or the second. Or the third...
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's not confuse two kids fighting out an argument with systematic bullying. Many kids get beat up and the only lesson to be wiser on is "I shouldn't have looked at him" or "I should bring more money to give him next time". Most kids haven't been bred to stand up in a fist fight. Especially when many bullies have numbers on their side. I don't think I've ever seen a violent bully pick on someone when he was alone.
And I don't know why you brought up 9/11. The reason nobody did anything on the first planes is that historically you have a better chance at living if you let the hijackers go to where they want and get released at some point later rather than risk crashing the plane. That's why when the passengers of flight 93 learned what the hijackers' intentions were they DID fight back.
Anyway, to bring this back to school children escalating things to an unacceptable point I'll toss in a movie quote:
"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."
Unfortunately I don't think anything has done more to curb bullying in schools than Columbine.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:4, Interesting)
That means you get to go beat up the gang right? I mean they were being disrespectful to you by beating up your son. Eye for an eye.
Seriously though, you did talk to an attorney over this right? I'd be running for school board to get the fuck of a principle fired.
I'm amazed that somehow it's OK to react with physical violence when someone says something you don't like. Free speech and all that. How that shit has become to universally tolerated is beyond me.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea why it's like that. I was in school about 10 years ago, and the rules were made very clear. Every act of aggression is equal, including not only retaliation but self-defense, too.
If a bully attacks you with a bat you should take it. You won't be punished (except for being beaten with a bat). If you try to defend yourself both of you will be given equal punishments. Even if you get hit in the face but are able to push the person over and run like hell, that's somehow as bad as the initial attack.
I have no idea why people think crazy kids and school shootings are the result of videogames, and ignore the principals that order children to succumb to violent attacks because the authoritative figure said so.
..also, I would venture a guess that this may have something to do with the lack of respect for authority.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:4, Interesting)
Did talk to an attorney. He told me that he could take my money if it would make me feel better, but nothing would change.
My son repeated something he heard from a black comedian. The principal was black. The gang-bangers were black. Ipso-facto, by the powers of politically-correct magic, physical violence was justified.
By my twisted logic, the BET channel is now banned in my house.
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry but that's the dumbest thing I have ever heard, you sit and take getting beaten by a bat or you will get punished? What the fuck?!
Re:So, beat it out of them! (Score:3, Interesting)
The media sells what people are already buying, it's good business.
I like that, instead of producing a real study, they had the children rank themselves. That's science!