[deleted]
Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
281–290 of 593 posts
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation. In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reaso…
> as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games. It's also a reasonable assumption that people who naturally want to avoid actual violence play violent video games instead. This paranoia against violent video games was obviously fake from the start, and such a typically American thing - in line with the American puritan view that blowing up people in films…
- The paranoia was not uniquely American; as a minor, I could walk into a store in the US and buy e.g. Duke Nukem 3D, while my friend in Germany could not do so.
- I'm not making the claim that video games lead to violence, I'm just saying that we should apply the same level of analysis to studies supporting views we already have that we do to supporting views we do not already have. If this study was well done, great! If it was poorly done, then it is appropriate to call it out. If the study truly wasn't able to find any correlation (positive, per my hypothesis, negative per yours), then either there really isn't any correlation (meaning all of the potential forces that would cause a correlation happen to be perfectly balanced (which would be surprising to me), or there is something wrong with the study.
- To be clear, I don't think there is a causal relationship between violent video games and violent behaviors.
- There are likely correlations between video-games and ADHD, as well as single-player video games (actually any solitary activity) and depression. There are links between both of those and violent behavior, particularly self-harm.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#283I 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…
I observed this phenomenon in a few other subjects too, like articles about benefits of certain supplements or substances, that praise some parenting styles, etc.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation. In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reaso…
How about the fact that gaming grew by every metric by orders of magnitude between 80s and now and violent crime dropped by half of more everywhere in the world. If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.
That's actually great evidence! Much better than "I and many of my friends who are currently successful played violent games and we are just fine." The latter is about as convincing as "My grandfather lived to be 90 and he smoked like a chimney."
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#285Fine. But my kids are still not allowed to play them. My house, my rules.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
-we should ask "what can I do that has a positive impact?"- That's part of the point of this essay that was on HN last year: "Fortnite and the Good Life," which seems relevant here. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-convivial-soc...
That's an excellent article, thank you.
This comment got my interest but I don't see anything linked here that's written by Yuval Harari. I can't tell if I've missed something, or if you're referring to another book called Sapiens other than Yuval's, or something else.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#287I doubt there's any kind of direct link between video games and people becoming violent, but I do think it reflects poorly on our societies that we seem to be fine with young kids shoot each other in the face with realistic weapons in CS:GO and Call of Duty but if you show one women's nipple it's unacceptable. While it probably doesn't directly incite violence in well balanced individuals, it does in my opinion trivi…
> but I do think it reflects poorly on our societies that we seem to be fine with young kids shoot each other in the face with realistic weapons in CS:GO and Call of Duty but if you show one women's nipple it's unacceptable.
I havent seen this personally, but isn't this more of an American tendency than a general western thing? On the American side media violence is penalized less (in terms of adult ratings) than nudity/sex while across the ocean you see the opposite trend.
Can anyone with more exposure to European (or Aussie/Kiwi) media confirm/deny this? I'm curious to hear the reason why if true.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids. If someone breaks into my house and tries to beat me to death, I'm not going to try to reason it out with them, I'm calling the police.
I think we all very clearly know that there are exceptions where you do need to ask for external help.
Some things still need to be said.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#289Earlier 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 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!…
"Work it out" is a strategy for equals. With major age/size/strength differences it just becomes domination and submission. Parents refusing to provide the "monopoly on violence" just results in kids who are worse at fighting learning to do whatever the bully says, and probably still getting beaten for the fun of it.
I mean I do agree that kids need to learn to navigate conflict, but adults should ideally be monitoring and should definitely get involved when power differentials get out of hand.
Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids. If someone breaks into my house and tries to beat me to death, I'm not going to try to reason it out with them, I'm calling the police.
Hopefully that's not all you do. That'd be a long beating with average police response being around 5 minutes.
How would you approach the situation?