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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

#81

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!…

Haha! That's a good one. She heard what she wanted to hear, or she was testing out lying. Kids all test out lying around the pre-school age, some of them find it useful and keep doing it.

I'd lean towards the lying part. Her strategy of leveraging higher powers didn't pan out, so she went with plan B of illusion of leveraging higher powers.

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

#82
post #3

As if that wasn't super obvious to everyone except fascists.

It's extremely important to scientifically verify "obvious" things, both because some people disagree and because things that are widely believed sometimes turn out to be false.

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

#83
I feel like this exemplifies the phenomena we see in the news today, and over the past few years has been increasing. Anyone can just say something on the news, and get a bunch of attention and credibility. But in order to disapprove it, we need a 10 year study, and multiple citations plus a large N value. Even then a lot of people won’t believe it nor will they take the science as a more credible source than the original person.

- video game violence causes real word violence - vaccines cause autism - insert conspiracy theory here

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

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up in the manner you describe, and being a parent of several young kids - I do find the prospect of them having a similar childhood pretty terrifying. I am forever thankful for a childhood like that - but letting my kids run amok in this day and age for hours brings me a lot of anxiety. It is an interesting paradox that makes me a bit sad. edit: for the record, we have them in wrestling / jiu jitsu - so…

Unless you mean right now because of carona, I'm not sure what about “this day and age” is more dangerous than when you grew up.

There are more people around. More cars. Where I live, there's about 1000x more needles than when I grew up. Way more crazy people roaming around. Maybe statistically they aren't causing any problems, but they sure harass me enough. Especially when it comes to "playing in the woods". The woods around town are the worst place now. We used to find camps and places where teenagers would party here and there but now when I walk in the woods (unregulated, non-protected "parks", or outskirts of real parks) there's people camping out and smoking, drinking, doing whatever. Both my hometown and where I live now are like this. It's not my imagination. My parents see the same thing. I don't care if the statistics say it's better.

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

#85
post #40

My mother specialized in early childhood learning and developmental psychology. She never once blinked when my brother and I played Doom or Wolfenstein, some of the most violent games of their times. We were allowed to play with toy guns and listen to whatever music we wanted including heavy metal (which my father despised.) I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew yo…

I live in a Mexican city near to the border with the US, the violence got really bad 10 years ago (some cartels were fighting for the border, now it is a lot calmer). Anyways “Narco culture” has influenced a lot of people (mostly on poor neighborhoods) and therefore it has influenced kids, it’s really sad to see boys playing with guns pretending to be narcos. The government has tried to ban those kinds of toys, I don…

I'm from Mexico too. Kids (males mostly) playing with toys guns or swords is normal.

Almost all games/sports are microcosms for wars, football, basketball, tag, hide n seek. Both kids and adults love these microcosms of war.

They don't pretend to be narcos because they like toy guns. They do it because they aspire to a quality of life they will never get via a normal working job.

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

#86

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…

> Hobbies where you can learn/hone new skills are more valuable. With video games, there's nothing to show for it.

Not strictly true. Games are fun because they are a learning experience. Boredom is the result of having learned all that is learnable from a thing, and frustration is the result of continually failing to learn from a thing. In this sense, all games are teaching or honing skills, just ask anyone who's finished Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy.

You may argue that games teach "worthless" skills, but I would say the same is true of many hobbies and, moreover, not everything valuable is valuable because it can be put on a resume.

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

#87
This is only tangentially related, but one thing I find interesting is how video games contributed to us being desensitized to violence. It's funny hearing from my mom about how The Exorcist was terrifying back then, while nowadays it's borderline funny to watch (and not only because of the technology not aging well).

Makes me wonder if any studies have been done regarding that.

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

#89
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…

Free on sci-hub.

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

#90
I remember the days when the Columbine school shooting was being blamed on video games (amongst other things like movies and goth culture) and as a result, all kinds of new fun censorship measures and laws were being talked about here in the US. FEPA[0] eventually being one of them (much later on). Luckily the censorship laws were struck down as unconstitutional[1]. Funny to have more evidence now that it was all misguided. Something I've always felt having been raised on violent video games myself and never feeling the urge to commit violent acts just because I played Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protectio...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...

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