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Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

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Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#121

Post by _qwfv »

watwut wrote: post #92
Ensorceled wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having. This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.

I have seen "work it out" method with friends kids and it convinced me that I won't do it. In one case, it ended up with older boy consistently bullying smaller sibling. By the time parents started to intervene, it was habit and it took months to be stopped. The younger kids still somewhat dislike brother, altrought he treats her much better now. Other cases I have seen were roughly similar. Work it out may work out…

I like work it out with guard rails. Observe, be prepared to talk about feelings, and ensure the lesson isn't "might is right", but otherwise give kids the opportunity to experiment with social interactions.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#122

Post by watwut »

moron4hire wrote: post #21

I'll tell you what does make me more aggressive. It's not the content of the video game itself. It's the other players in the multiplayer. I've basically sworn off of multiplayer for well over a decade now, with only vanishingly brief revisits to confirm things are only getting worse.

This study is strictly about whether you are more violent 10 years after playing the game.

If does not study at all the actual issue most of those who lived with excessive gamers (whether kid or adult) have. Meaning, annoying aggression right after playing and verbal abuse toward household members because they dare to exist if same flat where he lost the match.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#123

Post by tartoran »

Yeah, I doubt that video games will take a perfectly balanced healthy person and turn them aggressive. The problem though I think is that people who are aggressive to begin with may in fact normalize violence and in a stressful thoughtless moment IRL they may act on that violence. Again, this is not for most gamer folk but the ones who are predisposed to violence in the first place. Also sedentarism in children may be a factor to increase of violence.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#124

Post by abfan1127 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #113
abfan1127 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I emphasize "work it out" so often with our kids. Funny story. my 4yo was playing with the neighborkids around the same age. the neighbor girl came to me to tattle, saying they weren't sharing. I told her you need to work it out with them, use your words and manners. Clearly not the result she was looking for, she turned and yelled "He said you have to share!" I clarified with the other kids "that's not what I said!…

Approaching an adult for guidance isn't "tattling". Maybe I'm biased, but I grew to resent that word because I grew up in an environment where it was used more often than not by parents and teachers to excuse themselves from dealing with children in their care who were bullying others.

approaching an adult for guidance isn't tattling. Approaching an adult to use leverage to get what you want is tattling, especially when its over "sharing a toy that isn't hers". Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#125

Post by AtlasBarfed »

yazboo wrote: post #80

I have noticed that many social science articles posted on Hacker News bring out critical comments about study design, doubts about the strength of the study's conclusions, that kind of thing. This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agr…

Didn't we just have a HN about a depressing amount of food studies being sponsored by food conglomerates?

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#126

Post by mywittyname »

umvi wrote: post #94
yazboo wrote: post #80

I have noticed that many social science articles posted on Hacker News bring out critical comments about study design, doubts about the strength of the study's conclusions, that kind of thing. This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agr…

It's probably confirmation bias. Same reason a study with positive outcomes about coffee/alcohol/gay parenthood/gender reassignment/ are not criticized as much as a study on the same topic that had negative outcomes. We want certain things to be true so we (consciously or not) avoid criticizing studies bolstering what we want to be true and harshly criticize studies we want to be false. I like to think science always…

I mean, part of this is probably also some degree of us intuitively knowing the answer.

If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results.

That might sound ridiculous, but lots of people here grew up playing "violent" video games through the 90s-00s, and had large friend groups who did the same. And it's pretty likely that, for most of us, none of our friends ended up with violent or aggressive tendencies.

Anecdotes are not scientifically rigorous, but they aren't completely useless either. If violent video games caused measurable increases in aggressive behavior, people who were around a large cohort of people playing these games would notice this fact in action. Just like they'd notice that friends who eat a lot of cake tend to be larger than the one who don't.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#127

Post by opan »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #43
person_of_color wrote: post #23

I'm a rabid anti-gamer and I will tell you they are a gateway drug to antiproductivity.

I love video games, but I agree. You also have nothing to show for the time (I don't buy the "if you had fun, it was worth the time" argument). Hobbies where you can learn/hone new skills are more valuable. With video games, there's nothing to show for it. The only scenarios where I think they're beneficial is when they're enjoyed with friends (preferably in-person), or for the elderly to help with hand-eye coordinat…

I find that basically any video game is educational. From the most basic form of just teaching you new vocab to things like seeing into a job you haven't or wouldn't do in real life. Games are basically virtual work that's been made a bit more safe/easy/fun. You can grow digital vegetables and walk away knowing a bit more about that process than before playing. A game's dialogue and story may present philosophical themes that impact your real life, quite similar to reading a book or watching a movie.

The digital resources that don't cost you money also allow you to build things and think through things you otherwise couldn't. This is Minecraft's big appeal. You can't necessarily cut down the trees in your real yard, build structures without permits, and so on.

Games with online social elements also present similar benefits to hanging out with people. If you're fighting monsters with a group, you may talk about all sorts of things in your downtime.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#128

Post by JTbane »

person_of_color wrote: post #23

I'm a rabid anti-gamer and I will tell you they are a gateway drug to antiproductivity.

I find that hard to believe. You take away games and I'd watch TV. Take that away and I'd read a book or listen to music. All equally "unproductive".

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#129

Post by afandian »

gruez wrote: post #106
pansa2 wrote: post #98

I must admit, I don't understand the appeal of the most violent video games. I recently read "The Last of Us Part II" described as being "about [...] the awful things that humans can do to each other" [0]. Why would I want to spend my leisure time experiencing that? How is that entertaining? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/23/the-15-best-vi...

Is it any different than any other forms of art (eg. movies, tv, books) that depict human cruelty?

I agree with you, and the GP. Hyper-realistic movies depicting human unpleasantness aren't much different to hyper-realistic games depicting human unpleasantness.

Why do people enjoy spending their leisure time experiencing that? It's not a rhetorical question.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#130

Post by giantg2 »

primitivesuave wrote: post #110
Waterluvian wrote: post #14

Somewhat Tangential: Without any instruction my 2 and 4 year olds know how to turn things into weapons to beat each other with. Like puppies they seem to be testing limits to rough play. What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the y…

I think people form stronger ethical boundaries when it is self-motivated - i.e. your 4 year old learns how to be sincerely empathetic because you allowed them to deal with the emotions from rough play, rather than forcing them to play nicely. I used to teach kids for many years, and I noticed the "helicopter parents" tended to have more mischievous children, presumably because these kids rarely feel intrinsically mo…

I agree. I think this can even be true of adults. Many times I see people make absolute or semi-extreme comments about a topic, but they've never been in the type of situation they are discussing. I think through mistakes as a child, we learn to question our emotional responses/impulses more.
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