The Myth Surrounding Video Game Violence

There has always been this huge myth surrounding the coalition between video games and violent acts committed by the people who play them. As a huge fan of video gaming from an early age (I remember playing the C64 when dinosaurs ruled the earth) I have always been exposed to their fictional world of entertainment. Around this same time I was exposed to violent films such as The Terminator and Robocop films that carried 18 certificates at that time. Watching them my grandmother was always quick to point out that the action was fantasy and that such things never happened in real life.

Because of this I was able very clearly to differentiate the differences between reality and fiction. My nan was somewhat old school in her parenting ways however she had managed to adapt herself to the current way of thinking rather than be stuck in the 1930's. She taught me right from wrong, selfishness from selflessness. I understood what was the right thing to do and what was the wrong thing to do, I understood that the characters in games and TV were nothing more than actors created to entertain.

It is due to those parenting skills that I have become the responsible sensible adult I am today, I have my hero's and favorite characters but I know they are fictional creations for my entertainment.

Some people it seems, children and adults are not able to differentiate between the worlds of reality and fiction, to them the worlds merge as one and then horrifying atrocities are committed. These people were psychologically disturbed or due to bad parenting were not shown that video games are fiction. Maybe their parents left them in their rooms to play all day and never took an active role in their child's development. Maybe they used video games as a substitute for a babysitter and allowed their children to have delusions of grandeur.

Whatever the reason, parents cannot blame video games for their own failings and ignorance. They must take responsibility for the content their children are exposed to, don't blame the TV if you have the means to change the channel.

In conclusion: There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest playing video games changes your mental state, or causes psychological trauma or mental instability.

 

I think it stopped being a myth around 15 years ago.


I disagree with your signature saying that ignorance is stupidity.
We were born with brain cells, we were not born with knowledge. The two are not equal.
Knowledge can be held by complete tarts, so being knowledgeable does not mean you are not stupid.

Sorry for straying away from this very old topic.

 

yeah so this isn't even a debate anymore so not sure what you're trying to say or really what prompted this? Are you responding to something that happened in the UK recently? Lately things have been pretty well understood in psychology that playing videogames dosen't make you violent. There is no way to find the causality of do people who are violent play videogames that are that way, or did the game make them that way. All good experiments would be unethical to run. But from what we know, it's not caused from games.

That said we do know that if you watch a sporting event, even non-violent ones, the rates of violence go up shortly after the event is over. Controlling for liquor and all that, people just get more violent shortly after witnessing competitions and violent media. It's a short lived thing though and dosen't last longer than maybe a few hours. But that is something that's been found to be true over many occasions. The same questions I raised in the other paragraph hold true in this case too though.

Still not even a debate anymore.

 

ah, the memories of the C64. Maniac Mansion was amazing.

As far as the topic is concerned, I'm pretty sure that there wouldn't be many differences in violent crime and such without videogames in the world. A serial killer will be a serial killer even without playing Mario. It is similar to the music, film, and literature debates.
Also http://youtu.be/N1W7oJZerJU

 

I disagree with the people saying it is a non-issue, it very much is still an issue, albeit unwarranted of course. In Japan when someone drives a vehicle through a crowded intersection and runs people over, the first thing they say was, "He played this and this game." The guy who shot and killed all those people on that island just recently was attributed to playing WoW as a reason even though he himself said it was not, the media took it as such.

I think the original poster is just bringing up the conversation for discussion, even if there isn't really a reason to. I don't mind, as long as people don't get too upset over it.

Back on topic though, parenting is a huge factor. I think that games don't breed crazy people, but crazy people can gravitate to games. Are they something that pushes someone over the edge? To some people they will think so, even to the person who committed the act, but in reality who knows. Our brain is so complicated even we can't fully understand it.

 

I wrote a fairly long article on this matter and the research on the subject is mixed. It depends who you ask really. You can read the article at my more proffesional blog www.RandolphsDesk.tk

 

Uh, how does talking about yourself lead to any scientific conclusions?

 

I was firing weapons with a friend in the desert. A whole family on ATVs came upon us somewhat suddenly. First thing that came to mind: "I have a shotgun. I could take that motorcycle. This is soooooo Grand Theft Auto."

Life is interesting.

 

IF video games cause violence, then why don't we have more farmers...

 

The article I wrote in my link has a bunch of scientific peer reviewed papers as references if you want to really get into this kinda talk. I'll just post my paper with references here if that's easier for peeps than going to my website. It's just going to be a lot of text.

 

Let me get into "this kind of talk" instead. I agree there are still many misconceptions regarding videogames and it's cool you like writing stuff.

But,..I don't want to be an ass Tricky (god knows people are tilted at me for being negative already) but for what did you write that paper? At an academic level in Sweden that would never fly. Not even close. Did you write that for something and actually get passed on it? It's not a scientific paper.

x) You briefly do different pitstops at different places without going into depth with most things. At a scientific level you're supposed to present opposing views to give weight to your paper.

To me it looks like obvious cherrypicking from someone who's learned how to write in APA standard. The entire premise is pretty much you saying that a scientist said this (so it must be true)? Your entire papers premise is about if videogames affect agression. How about you stay on this topic? You talk about "visuospatial cognition" "social skills" to even talking about "improve verbal learning and processing speed of patients who have schizophrenia" going on to say "These types of games need not be violent in nature; actually they will be designed in a very different manner so as to improve the intended areas of functioning."

Relevance to the research question?

This is in basically a single side of a paper. Stay on topic. It's obvious your not attempting to discuss violent videogames at all at this point you want to come to the conclusion that "videogames are good" or that "videogames have benifits" and you're pushing for it HARD jumping all over the place.

x) You don't define any terms at all. What do you even mean when talking about "The social skills" etc??? What is defined as a "violent videogame" even??? At what games did the scientists you refer to do their studies?? You talk about street fighter and virtua fighter did they do this too???

x) You mix in your own emotions and thoughts all over the place and present them as facts.


Examples:

"When there is a new medium of entertainment it will always be met with scrutiny and accused of “causing our children to go bad†Says who? Why are you using quotationmarks?

"The stereotype of a videogame player is an overweight person who is socially inept and has no real life ambition. However, in reality, this is surely the minority as most major games played today are either team games are one-on-one" Surely? Says who?

[...]

"These types of games all are built by a community of like-minded people who dedicate their leisure time to bettering themselves at this activity. " All of them really?

"Beyond just helping normally functioning adults have more fulfilling social lives and improvements to visuospatial cognition, videogames can also improve verbal learning and processing speed of patients who have schizophrenia (Sartory, Zorn, Groetzinger, and Windgassen, 2005)." Are you actually saying that these 3 authors agree that videogames give adults more fulfilling social lives as compared to not playing videogames? Are you sure you're not confusing "can have positive social effects" with such a bold (wrong) statement? What studies have been done comparing the "fulfilling social lives" of people who play lot of games and those who don't to bring this claim about?

"They talk on internet forums, travel to nation-wide and international tournaments to test their skills and socialize about the games they play. The social skills of people who play games are well developed because they constantly talk to one another in a similar way to how players on a sports team chat before and after a big match. "


Says who? Where are you references regarding these? Do you even understand what big claims you're making here? You are saying you know how people react to playing games, regardless of games, and basing this of what can only be seen as your own experiences. Cool, playing games makes you travel more and be more on forums - wtf? As opposed to what? Other media or interests? The general population of fightinggame players don't hang in forums and/or travel to international tournaments or are you claming that they do? VFDC didn't get a boost of 300k members after VFS dropped and was downloaded. Harada said in a recent interview for instance that only 10% of soulcal players according to their data enter tournaments.


"Kestenbaum and Weinstein (1985) found the whole discussion about the negative aspect of videogames on adolescents to be normal resistance from parents and society to a new tool for growing children to release psychic tension in a socially acceptable manner. Instead of coming home from a difficult day at school frustrated and angry with no way to release their destructive drives, adolescents can come home to a few rounds of Call of Duty and thus release the tension. "

Really? Do you think that when they wrote that book in 1985 based on findings maybe from 1982-83 they were thinking about Call of Duty? Cause that looks like a reference of it. Old reference is old btw and not relevant (the situation in the beginning of the 1980's is NOT as they are now mmorpgs didn't even exist which is a huge part of gambling addictions).

To me it's mindboggling that you don't present a single negative effect of gaming saying it's all myths as a sort of result. In fact it sort of pisses me off when for instance mmorpg addicition, internet addiction (ALL gambling addiction) etc, is extremly real and this isn't even up for debate. MMORPGS are designed around the same behavioristic princples as a slot machine to make people keep playing (for instance the earlier levels you increase rapidly but then the effort between levels increase in WoW and diablo). They are addictive by DESIGN. You present, and give to someone just glancing, basically the view of "there's nothing wrong with playing videogames evaaah it's just myths!" and then quote just positive things. Meanwhile people are suffering. Btw the current debate now isn't regarding violence it's regarding something which you don't even present (but still goes extremely against your "findings" socially):



TL;DR: Imo your entire paper (text) is unscientific and trying to hide your personal views behind bigger names than yourself. You're clearly biased. If you want to write an argumentative text do so but don't present it as a scientific paper.

I teach psychology at upper secondary by the way and I have degrees in psychology, English and philosophy but I don't want to go into a pissing contest it's just to state my background.

 

Kiwie it was for a class. Not a peer reviewed nothing, just an academic paper for a class with a two page limit about a topic kinda related to what we've been talking about that week. I got an A in the class and the paper at columbia uni so it's legit regardless.

(disclaimer I didn't real your whole post just enough to see you asked this question)

 

The arousal addiction thing is getting a lot of media attention but it has a pretty obvious motive in the US: stirring up a moral panic in order to make macroeconomic and social problems appear medical and individualized. Inevitably this is going to get used as ammo against feminism in the culture wars, since the focus is on males alone. America is crazy, ofc.

I know it's not all that easy to see if you do not live here (well, maybe it is if you follow the media, lol) but enjoying something "too much" can and will be easily confused with genuine behavioral addictions. I'm confused as to how a behavioral addiction would even be diagnosed beyond self-reporting, honestly.

Still, it's pretty hard to get behind this "demise of guys" thesis when it is couched in terms that implicitly support a regressive social agenda. If you look at this CNN article you can see it go through a litany of pop-psych examples that amount to non-sequiturs:

Okay, so arousal addiction makes us both risk averse and primes us for a terrorist mass murder. It's worth considering that this aversion would be to the risks intrinsic to an extremely competitive, economically stratified society that has utterly failed the same generation (all of it, to varying degrees) this article decries.

I don't doubt arousal addiction exists, but to what extent it is significant taken alone, when the same "guys" are saddled with extremely limited job prospects and/or a big chunk of student debt? Doesn't that make escapism all the more seductive? Apply the same sort of notion to say, consumerism, TV or investment banking, for example. All of these are much older than video games and internet porn. Where does that leave us? Hah.

This is more relevant to the discussion, and it's an iffy correlative claim lumped into the rest of the borderline-nonsensical article. Again, this contradicts the notion that games make guys introverted and 'risk-averse', but rather prone to aggressive and violent behavior. WTF?

 

An addition line is drawn at negative occupational, academic, or social consequences for the behavior. You hit any of those three and you got yourself an addiction possibility, it's all a matter of to what degree these negative effects are.

 

YOU HAVE A DESK???

Jealous!