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Video Games Seriously Harmful to Children? 85

Posted by Zonk from the quack-quack dept.
Coltron writes "In an article published by AskDrSears.com, medical professionals go over step by detailed step why video games are so terrible for a child's developmental Health." From the article: "A green label suggests the game is suitable for all ages. Yellow or red labels signal the video may contain violence, sexual content, or bad language. While these ratings are a start, preview the 'E' or 'ALL' ratings anyway, since the level of violence the raters consider harmless may not be acceptable in your home." This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously.
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Video Games Seriously Harmful to Children? More

Video Games Seriously Harmful to Children?

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  • I've seen this somewhere... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Godeke ( 32895 ) * on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:18PM (#14167306)
    Simply execute

    s/video games/dungeons and dragons/

    to get the original article back. Ok, maybe it isn't an *exact* match, but I heard this line of tripe (including the supposed "experts") when I was a kid about playing D&D. Somehow I managed to not end up an axe murderer, as did the majority of the others. Those who did experience problems did so at a lower rate than the community at large. (26 suicides out of a population which would have expected 300 per year for its size).

    That said, I still put *limits* on the games that enter this house. I have no problem with the Dynasty Warriors "hack 1000 soldiers" type games, or 3D "run and gun" games like Ratchet and Clank... because they are clearly *unrealistic*. Musou attacks and Lombaxes are pretty much fine with me.

    GTA on the other hand has a story line that is much more founded in the real world. It isn't that I think that my son will *emulate* the story, per se, as much as I would prefer he not be exposed to the topics the story *covers* at his age. The same way I avoid giving him books and film covering similar topics. Emotional readiness for ideas is a real issue that gets discarded in the annoyance with the bad reputation games are being hounded with.

    On the up side, this site isn't trying to censor, ban or otherwise ruin the adult's fun.
    • Or, depending on how far back you go,

      s/video games/homosexuality [wikipedia.org]/
      s/video games/being black [wikipedia.org]/

      And I'm certain there are more examples. Particularly in psychology, if only one guy is saying "I have proof!", and all the other experts are saying "we're not sure if that's real proof or not, but we as a society tend to agree with you, so we're not going to critize your study too much", then it's best to wait for a little bit for the answer to firm up on one side or the other.

      Also, children face risks in a

    • Personally if you run s/video games/soap operas/g , then I pretty much agree with just about the whole thing. I guess this goes to show that.... well that..... ...ahh forget it. Nothing short of an abusive parent is going to stand any real chance of screwing anyone up.
    • The funny thing is GTA:SA infact has a VERY positive story line.. it's shocking but true. CJ spends the first part of the game trying to rebuild his life after being put in prison, the second half of the game is trying to make something of himself (and get rid of drug dealers around his home), then the final part is sorting out some corrupt policemen who have been taking advantage of him.

      GTA:SA hadn't had a lot of press about it being positive. I really don't like the gang culture at all, but the gang eleme
    • Sure, you didn't turn into an axe murderer. But should we really be allowing a product in society that turns even one in ten people into an axe murderer like D&D did, or video games do now? What if the rate is one in a hundred? Where do you draw the line?
      • You know, it is sad when you have to look up someone's history to determine if they are joking anymore. Because to "get" a joke you have to respect someone enough to know they aren't that stupid. Here on slashdot I have to check peoples prior comments *just to make sure* they aren't *really* that dense. :)

        BTW, you passed, welcome to my friends list :)
        • Yeah, for a while I used to append ;-) to all my humorous posts, but that started to seem too blatant to me. Ruins the fun of having that moment of 'is this person serious?' run through your head. :-)
        • I'm so glad you posted this, because I was getting ready to ream this dry fellow a new one.

          I usually only go through the history after someone proves to be a moron, I'll try this proactive approach from now on.
    • I wasn't emotionally ready for Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan when it first came out in theaters. When it appeared that people started dying I insisted we leave the theater, and I don't think my sister one year younger was any better either. The mind control worms thing really bothered me too. They do too much talking about the emulate factor and not enough about the overwhelming the emotions factor.
      • Hell, it's been Twenty-*coughcough* years since I first saw the movie and the ear-work thing STILL makes me cringe!

      • Re:Yeah, I wasn't ready for STII (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Irish_Samurai ( 224931 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @03:23PM (#14168537)
        I can remember the instant I became desensitized to violence. It was the scene in Robocop where the lead character is getting shot all to shit in the warehouse pre-transformation.

        I was pretty advanced for a kid my age, so my parents had allowed me monitored access to media considered generally inappropriate for my age group. I usually ingested it just fine. I was really into sci-fi and was looking forward to seeing a movie about an ass kicking robot.

        I nearly cried during that scene because I couldn't determine if that could happen without you passing out or dying. All the other violent scenes I had witnessed resulted in very quick deaths. The idea that the pain and damage could add up like that was a little too much.
    • Duh... of course it is the same danger... or haven't you seen this informative expose [cybermoonstudios.com]

  • nothing to see here, move along. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu&gmail,com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:19PM (#14167324) Journal

    I happen to think there is some relationship between video games and the effect they have on children and their development.

    I also happen to think this is a poor article, claiming "studies show", and citing not one. The best the book does is reference a title of a book by an author claiming effects, meta-citing I suppose.

    If I were a concerned individual about anything and this was the reference quality handed me by one side, I'd not be swayed at all -- this borders on urban myth in its presentation ala "they say that...".

    • Absolutely. This article doesn't reference any serious study and just state things. Moreover, some statements are just false and show the writer is NOT a parent who knows about video games and knows how to grow a kid within that world. Probably not a pyschologist either. As an example:

      As one mother in our practice said to her child: "I refuse to let you grow up to be a jerk."

      Who, as a parent would ever EXPECT their kid to understand or integrate that statement? The article says "the kid got the point". N

      • Man, that hits my buttons. Only a self-absorbed, dumbfcuk with no fscking clue how being a parent works would talk to a kid like that ("I rufuse to let you grow up to be a jerk").

        I have a five year old. I don't let him play many games, because, well, a) he sucks at them and it's frustrating to watch, and b) games are *my* hobby, and while I love sharing things I like with him, most of the games I like are totally inappropriate for a five-year-old.

        That all said, when I do let him play a game, or hang out w

  • This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously.

    While you may agree or disagree with the studies I think this site is right: leave it up to the parents to decide whether a game is suitable for their children. If they don't want their children to play games then fine, and that is their decision. It is not like this is being forced upon everyone.
    • I couldn't agree with you more. The old, oft muttered question "Where are the parents?" when studies like this reach the main topic of discussion.

      Again, it's another study on another aspect of my child. With so much money being spent analysing today's world, how about improving things that are really going to affect my child? Schools, health care, after school programs?

      Nah - but we're going bash video games until they reach the evil status of smoking, sex, and pornography.

    • I personally think that there really isn't enough real data on how violent games affect kids, so I really have nothing to say about that part of the article. I do have to say that the "What should you do..." part was at least sensible and didn't place all of the blame on the video game. It made it clear that the parents should be policing what the children are playing and talk with them about it. I find that the scariest statistic (and I use that word lightly) in the article is this one: "A study compar
    • Helping parents decide whether a game is appropriate for children is one thing. Helping game stores decide whether a game is appropriate for adults is something else.

  • What? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by joeljkp ( 254783 )
    "This is a bad sign for the gaming industry if a medical site is beginning to take the anti-gaming studies this seriously."

    What? Why shouldn't they take them seriously? Are the studies with merit, or without? If they are, it's the gaming industry that should be taking them seriously.

  • Here we go YET again... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:22PM (#14167349)
    So many objectionable premises here...where to start?

    Eighty percent of the most popular video games feature aggressiveness or violence as the primary themes, and in twenty percent of these games the aggressiveness or violence is directed toward women.

    This statement is ambiguously worded...does the author mean against women exclusively, or just against women in addition to men? If he means exclusively, I call shenanigans, and ask for a list of these games. If he means women in addition to men, couldn't this objection be contrued as sexist?

    Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"...

    Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^

    Could these video games trigger what we call "instant replay," so that the player is conditioned to pull a trigger when seeing someone go after his girlfriend?

    As has been mentioned so many times before, the person who has difficulty distinguishing the game world from the real world has much deeper problems than mere video game addiction.

    We are concerned that this terrifying technology can fill a child's vulnerable and receptive brain with a whole library of scary instant replays, so that by reflex he replays one of these violent scenes when faced with a real-life problem.

    I'm concerned for the child whose parents allow video games to teach them values and morals, rather than taking a more active role in their progeny's upbringing...

    Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome.

    Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.

    Children instinctively copy adult behavior, and violent imagery is much more easily stored in the memory than less violent behavior.

    This reminds me of when Bender told the TV audience, "Have you ever considered just turning off the television...sitting down with your kids...and hitting them?"

    One study even reported an increase in the stress hormone adrenaline during video playing.

    I'm sure it does...just as climbing a tree, jumping your dirt bike off a ramp, participating in a sporting event, or just about any other activity children might construe as 'fun'. Should we also discontinue all those activities?

    These games give children an out when they don't feel in with other groups.

    What the author, as well as other 'anti-game' activists, persist in denying is that the gaming community is a group that is every bit as valid as other social groups. Perhaps the author feels that gamers should stop being so antisocial, and hang out with the stoners behind the school instead....at least they'll be 'in a group' then, right?

    During video-playing, children get instant gratification and can manipulate their roles to what they want. Yet, in the real world, they have to wait, and it's not always fun.

    I take it the author has never so much as tried to get all the easter eggs in GTA, much less developed a character on Everquest or WoW...we'll show you the meaning of patience.

    Media researchers fear that children will grow up viewing the world as violent and dangerous - a viewpoint dubbed the mean world syndrome.

    Turn on CNN. Let that sink in for a couple of minutes. Then try to preach to me without choking on your own hyprocrisy.

    Scary technology now allows players to "morph" headshots of other people (such as other kids or teachers whom they might hate) onto the bodies of the characters in the video game in order to shoot their heads off.

    I used to have a dartboard on which I pinned pictures of people I disliked...and yet, amazingly enough, I never threw a dart at a person.

    Allowing violent video games in your home could be considered as a form of child abuse. In fact, it's visual abuse.

    The real 'visual abuse' was having to read this article. Thanks so much.
    • Eighty percent of the most popular video games feature aggressiveness or violence as the primary themes, and in twenty percent of these games the aggressiveness or violence is directed toward women.

      Yeah this is a pretty stupid statement. I mean, what the hell is someone supposed to think? That the games are sexist because a dispropotionatly small amount of time is directed towards women? Or that games are sexist because a dispropotionatly high amount of violence is directed towards women?

      I mean what the hel

    • Re:Here we go YET again... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:07PM (#14167742)

      This is a manipulative article.

      Could the video game addict become conditioned to shoot or hit whenever provoked? Could these video games trigger what we call "instant replay," so that the player is conditioned to pull a trigger when seeing someone go after his girlfriend? We are concerned...

      What this actually says: "We don't know whether this extreme reaction is at all likely."

      What the reader is intended to take away from the article: "A video game addict can become conditioned to shoot..."

      Typical tabloid-style, manipulative "questions" being raised.

      • so that the player is conditioned to pull a trigger when seeing someone go after his girlfriend?

        Yeah, cuz in the good old days people didn't react to guys making plays at each other girlfriends. It was all good. Wife swapping, free love all that jazz. Wait? Wasn't that only for hippies? An odd statement from a "marine".

        I think California might still have a law... something about "Crime of Passion"? Wherein if you catch your wife sleeping with another man and you kill them both you recieve a lesse

    • [sarcasm]
      What get's me is how clearly this article demonstrates the rise of violence in our society in the last decade or so. I mean look at all the new words that had to be invented since this generation of video gamers has come into existence. 'Homicide', 'Oedipus Complex', 'Necrophilia' to name a few. These are scary stuff and surely did not exist before the advent of these terrible games.

      It's really those 3rd world low tech countries that have it good. Those lucky bastards barely get TV, let alone a cha
    • Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...

      Of course, Penny Arcade has words of wisdom [penny-arcade.com] on this matter.

    • "Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, a psychologist at Arkansas State University and past specialist as a "killologist"..."

      Sorry, but I find it very hard to take anyone seriously who styles themselves a 'killologist'...unless of course I'm competing against them in Unreal Tournament...^_^

      "Colonel Grossman dubs this as AVIDS - acquired violence immune deficiency syndrome."

      Ah yes...the 'killollogist'....thaanks ever so much, Colonel.

      Agreed, but could the crackpot be delivering a non-crackpot messa
      • So the military does in fact believe that visual exposure to violence does desensitize to some degree. If so, it is not a stretch to believe that violence depicted in video games can provide desensitization as well. Hell, the interactive and participatory nature of video games may make it more effective than passively watching a film.

        I have absolutely no problem with shooting someone's head off in GTA, and I got a kick from watching a disembodied eyeball sprite roll down my screen after I blew someone into

  • Moving pictures harmful (Score:3, Funny)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:27PM (#14167387) Journal
    This article is idiotic and impossible to read if you have the critical thinking skills more sophisticated than that of a turnip.

    However (and this is the silliest thing I'll say all week):

    Something about CRTs make me uncomfortable. I'll never own a television, and when I have kids I'm not even sure I want them seeing a computer monitor 'till they're three or four. I'm nervous about watching moving pictures my own self. I superstitiously believe somehow that they'll have weird effects on visual cognition in infants.
    • I'm nervous about watching moving pictures my own self.

      Me too... scares the crap out of me. All this new-fangled scrolling around in text editors and comannd shells has go to stop.

      Puch-cards all the way!

    • Something about CRTs makes me uncomfortable too - the sound... I owned one, when they were the only choice, but didn't use it much and only for short bursts. LCDs are much nicer - they don't squeal. Fortunately LCDs became fairly common before I left college, so I've never had to sit at a CRT during a job or anything.

      As for TVs, most of them will give me a bad headache in about a half-hour (from the sound), and I don't have enough cash or TV viewing inclination to buy an LCD or plasma TV.

    • Re:Moving pictures harmful (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @04:26PM (#14169133) Journal
      Background: My degree is in Comp. Sci, and I took a handful of Psych classes. So no, I'm not an expert.

      However, if you go and look up the developmental stages of the human being, which are increasingly well documented, I do not find fears that computers may have odd effects a silly one.

      Children are not little adults. This is all the more true for toddlers, and even more true for babies. While it is true that there are some things that there is evidence that babies believe/know that are surprisingly sophisticated moral judgements (such as who hit who, and which end of that relationship is scary, at a very young age), it is also true that babies have to learn things like "if you pour all the liquid from one glass into another glass of a different shape, you have the same amount of liquid."

      Babies are effectively aliens, if you haven't carefully studied them, and your internal cognition models of other normal adult humans do not apply to them very much, if at all.

      I am concerned that during these formative early years (let's call it 0-3 for concreteness), excessive electronic interference could be legitimately damaging on a number of cognitive levels. I could also be wrong. Studying this topic would be very difficult to do ethically.

      Of particular concern to me is the learning of the value of effort; I am concerned that a young child given very normal electronic toys that produce entire songs at the press of a button are teaching that miniscule amounts of effort can "produce" that much result. I'd much rather see a kid play with physical toys (like blocks, legos, etc, as age-appropriate) that have a much more normal effort/effect reward.

      I think that there's little danger in "playing it safe"; I am concerned without proof about these things, but I do have existential evidence that not being exposed to such things at 0-3 does not result in a adult incapable of understanding electronics. As such, should I ever become a parent one of my plans is to ban any such toys for the first few years in favor of more classic, physical toys, from which one can learn about the physical world much more effectively. (Lest I sound like a Nazi, my kids would probably end up with a computer at the same time as anyone else's; remember, I'm talking 0-3-ish here.)

  • A Better Way of Putting It (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sugar Moose ( 686011 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:30PM (#14167419) Journal
    Funny, when I first read "just as parents learned to tame the TV," I thought it said "just as parents learned to blame the TV." I think it fits better my way.

    • It certainly does...after all, child obesity is at epidemic levels in America...I really don't see how the author can make the claim that parents have 'tamed' the TV. Of course, the author might counter that this only further proves his point (after all if we haven't 'tamed the TV', we're in even worse shape regarding video games), but it would have been nice to see this argument in the article (especially as it's more persuasive than any of the 'arguments' he actually cited). Instead, he starts out the a

  • Article has helpful suggestions (Score:4, Informative)

    by crotherm ( 160925 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:31PM (#14167432) Journal

    The suggested parental guidance section was pleasent suprise. After all the really silly things like, "It's scary", they have some really down to earth suggestions for parents. They do not say that all games are bad. They know video games are here to stay. They encourage active parental monitoring. After all, haven't the /. crowd been saying that since the first "Video Games Are Bad" report?

    • I wouldn't characterize them as 'helpful' as much as 'blatantly obvious'. I can sum up the seven paragraphs of the 'suggestions' section in three words:
      Parent your children.
      If parents can't do that properly, it's not likely that the reactionary psychobabble of a self-proclaimed 'killologist' is going to help them.


      • True, they are obvious to us. But you know the old saying, "If common sense is so common, how come nobody has any?" Too many parents today do not parent their children. The school does it, or TV, or computer, etc. Still, it was nice to see a list of suggestions that were not reactionary, but rather proactive.

         

    • I'm glad someone said this. I didn't read the whole article carefully, but my distillation is something like: There are games out there you don't want your kids to play. Here are some strategies to sort them out, and help your kids avoid them. Nowhere does the article say 'games are bad' or 'censor videogames'.

      While some may say, 'duh. parent your kids,' that's what the whole site seems to be about: advice on how to parent your kids.

  • Self Esteem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neostorm ( 462848 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @01:37PM (#14167487)
    "It interferes with self-esteem. The most disturbing fact is that children who have the least amount of self-esteem and mastery over their life are the ones most attracted to video games. According to Dr. Jane Healy in her book Endangered Minds, boys who pursue violent video games are more likely to have low self-confidence in school and be less successful in personal relationships. Studies have also shown that for girls increased time playing video or computer games is associated with lowered self-esteem. These games give children an out when they don't feel in with other groups."

    What part of that is wrong or harmful? In all honesty, when I was growing up if I didn't have games as an "out" for not fitting in with nearly every other person I knew, I wouldn't be here today.
    I'm all for studies and whatnot, but when they start taking the positive aspects of gaming and turning it negative, this is even more obviously a sham to get attention for themselves.
    Games just seem to be the popular, social punching bag of the day lately.

    • "It interferes with self-esteem. The most disturbing fact is that children who have the least amount of self-esteem and mastery over their life are the ones most attracted to video games. According to Dr. Jane Healy in her book Endangered Minds, boys who pursue violent video games are more likely to have low self-confidence in school and be less successful in personal relationships. Studies have also shown that for girls increased time playing video or computer games is associated with lowered self-esteem.

  • I agree, everything that is dangerous needs to be outlawed. Booze, smoking, driving, flying, sugar, chocolate, fat, salt, electricity, and gaming all have obvious detrimental effects to our mental and physical well being. Just to be on the safe side, we should probably ban fire too...

  • Warnig! Warning (Score:2, Insightful)

    by FuzzyDustBall ( 751425 )
    WARNING! Will Robbinson Waring! (Flail Arms)
    Just looking at the higlighted titles on each paragraph it is clear that this is just to scare and cause reaction:
    WARNING:
    Disturbing stats.
    Disturbing research
    Conditions children to be violent.
    Desensitizes children to violence.
    It's developmentally incorrect.
    it's physiologically disturbing.
    It's more dangerous than TV
    it's habit forming
    it interferes with self-esteem
    it's poor role modeling.
    It's a fearful world
    It's scary.

    come on how many time
  • Every two years, you hear the bullshit come out of Washington and other state capitals as our corrupt "leaders" spew forth their latest round of lies to "protect the children" in order to get re-/elected. Just who are they pandering to? Aren't the majority of gamers adults? This isn't the Atari 2600 nor NES days where they were merely children's toys. Today's expensive games require expensive PCs and expensive consoles - something that kids can't readily afford but we adults can.

    I sincerely hope this
    • Super Mario 3 cost $50, and my dad drove out on my birthday to get it because I'd gotten an excellent report card the day before.

      Don't remember much about him bringing home Atari games, but I think they were around the same price. In no way were video games ever "kids toys." I didn't have a job until high school, but $6 an hour (less after taxes) still didn't allow games into the budget :(

    • Today's expensive games require expensive PCs and expensive consoles - something that kids can't readily afford but Santa Claus can.

      Fixed. Most kids don't buy consoles for themselves; they get a console as a Christmas gift.

  • pseudo science (Score:3, Informative)

    by max born ( 739948 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @02:00PM (#14167679)
    Disturbing stats? The stats themselves are only disturbing if you establish a correlation between cause and effect.

    willingness to kill another person is not a natural behavior ....

    We've been killing each other since the beginning of time even before video games were ever invented. Whether or not it's natural is debatable and doesn't tell us much anyway

    A 1998 study showed that while playing video games children experience a high release of the brain neurotransmitter dopamine, w hich could be called the hype hormone.

    High levels of dopamine are common in people with obsessive comulsive disorder so it should be easy to show a correlation between OCD and violence which the author has not done so we might assume there is none.

    If there's a correlation between violent crimes and video games then how come while video games are on the increase violent crime is on the decrease? [usdoj.gov]

  • What I see as being most disturbing about this article is the premise that children are not born violent, but made that way through TV/videogames. If you have ever seen young kids, you'll realize that violence is a natural thing for them. I was shoving my brother around at the age of 4, long before I played any video games. (I don't remember doing it, but my parents do). The premise of the rest of the article is pretty silly- from what I understand, people who play videogames are actaully less lik

    • Re:Children are not born violent? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @03:28PM (#14168582) Homepage Journal
      If you've raised children, you realize that a lot of stuff doesn't come built in at all. They don't know not to stick their fingers on the stove. They don't know that when they hit, kick and bite that they will get punished at the very least by losing friends.

      It's not exactly true that chilren are "born violent" any more than they are born thinking flames are OK to touch. It's more that part of learning the consequences of their actions are a normal part of growing up. Learning the hitting and biting have bad conseqences is like learning that when you stand on the edge of a coffee table, it will tip over and you'll get hurt.

      Another thing raising actual children will teach you is that people are born disriminators. Your hear a lot of stuff like this: You said I shouldn't hit my sister with a bat; you never mentioned hockey sticks.

      Combining these two observations, I'd say that it's worth being concerned about video game violence on very young children, but not overly so. Most children get plenty of feedback about the inappropriateness of violence, and most are quite capable in my opinion of discriminating between video game violence and real life violence. There may be exceptions of course. I'd be more concerned about fanatasy elements in games that are not offset with real life learning experiences. Suburban kids growing up playing Grand Theft Auto might for example learn to think of cities as being more dangerous than they actually are. Or they might get an overly romantic view of war by playing war games.

      I think it's important to know what your kids are playing or watching on TV, and to use that as an occasion to talk to them about things that presented in their entertainment. When you don't think something is appropriate, or you even just feel uncomfortable, there's nothing wrong with saying no. You can say, "I don't like that game because I don't like seeing people blown up." And if Johnny doesn't think it's fair, he can add it to the list of things you did to screw up his childhood.

      In the end my biggest concern about games are opportunity costs. It's too easy to spend all your time at them, instead of the other activities they could be doing like playing outside with their friends.

      • I was born rather violent.
        I grew up in a small home, with two entirely nonviolent parents, with no tv, and little "social interaction with my peers"; no preschool or such.(At least, before I was around 3.)

        However, the first thing I did when my little sister was born -- I was two at the time... was to find the biggest, heaviest object I could hold and try to smash her head in with it.

        No tv exposure at all.
        No video game exposure at all.
        And I'm a girl.

        I've been told by many psychologists that this is entirely

  • ...are parents that don't bother to be involved in their lives. The line that "They hide things, they lie, they don't want me to butt in, I want to be their friends so they don't hate me" is all crap. It is your job to raise your kids, to be involved. So what if they hate you; that means you are doing your job right. I hated my parents because I thought they were too strict when I was growing up. Turns out, they knew better and I thank them for it now as an Adult.

    If parents spent 1/2 as much time dea

  • Children are not born violent, they are made violent. They become conditioned to associate violence with fun, as part of "normal life." Are we bringing up a generation of soldiers, or are we bringing up children? The end result of unmonitored video violence is we are training an army of kids.

    Bullshit.

    Children are not all born little innocent creatures incapable of doing harm to anything ... and I don't trust any kind of "science" which makes that as a basis for fact. This where idiotic phrases like "manchu
    • I agree with you fully. Also:

      They become conditioned to associate violence with fun...

      Violence IS fun. Frankly humans have a need for violence and strife.

      That's all sports really do except focus that into something that in the end is harmless. Even something as benign as chess is a battle of two armies. Any sport with a 'goal' or 'endzone' is clearly the same game with a few different rules. Some have more contact than others.
  • Now gaming was slightly more benign back when I was young, but I grew and learned so much from games. They took me to new worlds, increased my reading abilities, built freakish hand-eye coordination, and helped my decision making and process improvement abilities.

    I don't think GTA, or PGR3 will be doing much of anything for kids though... and that's sad. There aren't many games left with any real substance where they have the ability to *help* kids even if the help is secondary or tertiary to the action. We
  • NOTHING, no government or social policy can affect the quality of life for a child if the parent(s) involved are not willing to participate in the child's life. You can't even make a law stating who and who should not be allowed to procreate. First, as for video games and developmental health, I owe my quick reflexes and good hand eye coordination to video games. I have saved my life, and the lives of others using quick wits and reflexes by avoiding an accident in a car, two concepts that video games hel
  • I played Doom, read porn, watched violent anime, listed to vulgar heavy metal (alternative I suppose is the better term for the mid 90's) music when I was an early teen. Hell... One of my earlier memories as a child before I was a teen was watching Scar Face.

    As a late 20 something, I turned out fairly well adjusted especially towards the opposite sex and successful career compared to many people who were sheltered growing up.

    From personal experience, I don't think any of the above have a negative affect on
  • My girlfriend is currently in medical school, and mentioned having been told that surgeons who play video games, especially just prior to surgery, actually make fewer mistakes during operations.

    Wired had a story [wired.com] which provides some information about it.
  • The assumption when I read the title is that the article will be the standard list of issues why video games, in excess, are actually bad for you: Lack of exercise, less socializing with peers, eye-strain.

    Instead we are treated to sanctimonious FUD, attempting to scare parents.

    The article presumes that my children are some sort of zombie-like sponges of inappropriate material, absorbing every indecency they observe. This tunnel vision moralizing fails to address that children have to posses

  • Second Hand Grossmanism (Score:3, Informative)

    by sesshomaru ( 173381 ) on Friday December 02, 2005 @06:29PM (#14170191) Journal
    Sigh, looks like it is time once again to debunk the writings of Lt. Col. David Grossman, who is the person that Dr. Sears cites as his authority in this article. I could just point everyone to this article, Grossman-ism: Media Violence and Mad Social Science [slc.edu]. It's a very good, scholarly article (with a lot of sarcastic wit so it isn't boring) that does a thorough job of debunking Grossman's primary assertion, that up until recently human beings have been basically psycologically unable, in the majority, to kill each other in armed conflict.

    However, I already pointed to this in a previous comment on yet another article on the coming ban on 'M' rated games. (I really don't know how long it will take, but I believe it is coming so be prepared for it.)

    So, in the interest in presenting new research on the subject of this impressive charlatan, I present this, The Dave Grossman Debate [theppsc.org]. The author tends to use emotional rhetoric too much but is understandably upset by the implications of Grossman's writing, which is that police officers and military personel are being turned into homicidal zombie killbots by the new 'murder simulators' that also happen to be the basis of the evil videogames that are poisoning our children:

    Your allegations imply that deadly force is routinely employed in a manner that is the product of a conditioned response. The troubling implication is that police don't use professional judgment on a case-by-case basis..... they merely pull triggers as a matter of conditioning!
    Even though the rhetoric is a little emotional for my taste (I prefer the dryer sarcastic wit of the other article) this article is dense with statistical and historical information debunking Grossman.

    Of course, none of this is going to matter to the believers.

  • In my last comment I wrote about how although I enjoy the Sims franchise, I understood many might possibly find it boring because of the lack of violence.

    If the gaming industry wants to improve its' image, the primary thing it needs to do is develop more games that are not based on the premise of violent conflict. I'm not saying that violent games necessarily are or are not harmful to kids, but no amount of arguing on its own is going to convince the Jack Thompsons of the world.

    There need to be more games t
  • "twenty percent of these games the aggressiveness or violence is directed toward women." huh?, what games?
    Super Wife Beaters?

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