Tracking the Harm Games Do 118
Every so often, video games are accused of causing all sorts of negative behavior in children, teens, and adults. These accusations are typically predicated on statistics that sound much more damning than they actually are. In that vein, gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun did their own tongue-in-cheek statistical analysis, complete with pretty charts and graphs. Quoting:
"As part of my research I thought to compare the sales of each GTA game with what the divorce rate must have been when each came out. As you can see each new GTA game has been directly correlated with an increase in divorces. ... An often ignored statistic (and you have to ask why it’s being ignored by the games media, don’t you?) is the sheer volume of PC games being released. We’ve all noticed the British population is abandoning the church, turning instead toward shopping, DVDs and knife crime. But few have thought to check for a connection between PC sales and the numbers of people attending their local Church Of England church on a Sunday. When you look at the data there’s little doubt left that as the publishers continue to release more and more PC games each year, our nation’s faith is being increasingly eroded. And at what cost? If only a graph could tell us that."
No bitch (Score:1, Interesting)
There is also a correlation (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is it is all intellectual wanking (Score:5, Interesting)
"Oh well this could maybe hypothetically desensitize people and cause problems, etc, etc." K, but that doesn't fit the actual data that violent crimes in the US have been trending down since around the time that videogames came out. The question shouldn't be "Can we try to find a contrived way that shows that video games might be related to perceptions of violence." The questions should be "Does playing video games make people more prone to act in a violent manner." If the answer is no, then who the fuck cares? There is no reason to be worrying about something if it isn't actually harmful.
As I said, first thing you have to account for in any of these cases is why violent crime has trended down. Just because it has doesn't mean that videogames might not increase violence, but you sure as hell have to account for that fact. You have to show that it would be even lower if video games were not around. You need to show that people who play violent video games are more likely to commit violent crime than those that don't.
Basically, if the only research out there is reaching extremely far to try and show minor differences in brain ERPs, then you've got nothing to go on. While that might be of academic interest, it is nothing to make any policy or law on. Only if games are actually causing more violent behavior, specifically illegal violent behavior (sports are violent but perfectly legal) is there a reason to have concern with regulating them because of it.