I Told You So: Violent Games Are Good For Kids!
This is a debate I've been having with members of my family for quite literally hundreds of thousands of years: which is worse for the young mind - passively watching horrible violence in a desensitized stupor or actively participating in a narrative which may be violent but is never passive. In other words, can it be good for socializing kids in this culture to pay attention to violence when it's appropriate and recognize when violence is inappropriate, and might that not happen because video game culture teaches us to make decisions and expect equivalent consequences?
A television news report into the research of Cheryl Olson at Massachusetts General Hospital finds that my crazy nog-fueled holiday rant is surprisingly apt. I get that way with nog: apt.
Anywho, after studying more than 1,200 12 to 14 year-old boys, Olson found most of them play Mature rated games, which she interprets as debunking the notion that M-rated games cause shootings and major violence. Since most of our boys playing Mature games are not going on murderous rampages, that makes sense.
Furthermore, Olson gives gaming its due as a social activity rather than a school for violence:
They’re more likely to play with a group of friends in the same room or over the Internet, so this stereotype of a solitary violent gamer up in his room wasn’t borne out, at least in our study.
[Video games are] not going to ruin them. They’re not going to go out and pick up a gun. Violent video game play is typical and normal for kids nowadays. That doesn’t mean that parents have to like it, but they shouldn’t panic about it.
I like this line of thought: the debate about the merits and demerits of gaming and children may be far from over, but there's one lesson we can all learn from Olson - it's the same lesson we learned from the late Douglas Adams.
Don't panic.
Study Shows Violent Video Games Pose Little Risk [FirstCoastNews]
[via GamePolitics]
tiny dancer
Posted to Miscellany on 11 July 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: violent games
I have thought a number of times about childhood play before the era of violent video games. Over and over I think about cops and robbers and cowboys and indians. Shooting at each other with fake guns be they made of plastic or just one's hand. Pow pow, you're dead. AAARRRGH, you got me. I'm dying. LOL....it was funny and fun. Okay, so technology came along and gave us graphic images to supplant or perhaps supplement our imaginations. What is the difference? I think this study is on to something.
I completely agree that violet games do not "cause" shootings (both ideologically and statistically, it would be impossible to prove)...
However, I'm having a hard time dealing with the proliferation of realistically-violent video games. Sure, Jonny's probably not going to pick up an axe and kill someone a la Manhunt, but maybe he's going to get a slightly warped view of pain, suffering, and life.
Do I think games like Manhunt 2 should be censored? No. But do I think retailers have every right not to carry it? Yeah.
Do I think politicians need to fill in for parents? No. Do I think we need an informed, rational public discourse about what youth have a right to purchase without parental consent? Yup, you betcha.
I feel like this blog has a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater (much in the way the politicians who you're critical of are doing). One study comes along and says "violent games might encourage violent behaviors," and wonks are ready to lockdown the industry. Yet, with studies like this, gamers say "See, nope, no problems here!"
Think about the new horror-torture genre taking off... Saw, Hostel, etc etc... yeah, they're scary and make your stomach turn, but they're also pretty f'ed up. Throughout cinematic history, torture movies have never been this mainstream (of course, it probably existed underground, but certainly did not have a mass following). Personally, I think there's a relationship there... we've got growing appetites for sadistic images of torture and murder. Yeah, it's inherently part of the human condition to wonder (and maybe even fantasize) sometimes about pain and death, but I think it's gone overboard.
How numb have we become to real human suffering? Sorry Mikey, but I disagree: If you want graphic imagery to supplement your imagination, let's think about something a little closer to home for all of us: how about all those hate crime photos of fellow LGBTQs with bashed-in faces or mutilated bodies?
I'm inclined to call bullshit if anyone's going to try to argue that there's not some sort of overarching paradigm of "brutality" in our everyday culture.
Sorry, but I see enough pain and suffering in my daily life to consider hacking away at polygons, or watching someone scream in pain, as a form of entertainment.
I'm a very violent person who knows how to fire handguns, and will crush people weaker then me.
But that was after I became a republican.