necrobump

Oh god. Not another troll.

Video games don't make kids more violent. God damn it you people are stupid, ignorant, and misinformed if you think it does. Should we also ban kids from watching violent movies? Or reading graphic novels? Kids being violent and violent video games have NEVER been proven to be linked. 9 times out of ten, violence is linked to mental instability. Try doing some research people.

These kind of issues are kinds of problems that tear us apart. The government has a stranglehold on our freedom these days. "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln.

The problem with this country these days is that the government is using laws to replace good parenting and common sense. "That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." Thomas Jefferson."

Some "adults" act completely immature. some teens have more maturity than 19-21 yr olds adults in todays society.

fact is maturity is relative to the individual and age has nothing to do with it.

Im 13 and I'm mature online. Have you heard some of the grown men try hards, I have there annoying as an immature 9 year old. Plus anyone playing this game usually has some of there kids self nostalgia etc inside. Everyone does lol.

Right, I've expanded it a little bit since I originally wrote it so I'm using that as an excuse to repost it again here. Lets have a look at some of the main arguments used against video-games: [u][b]Video games are addictive.[/b][/u] The problem with examining video-game addiction (as with alcohol, drugs, etc) is that research very rarely bothers to delve into the causes of why people feel compelled to indulge. Keith Bakker (founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts) speaking to the BBC back in 2008 stated; [i]"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies, but the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."[/i] He refers to a patient that is being treated at the clinic, a young man who was spending upwards of 10 hours a day playing Call of Duty, the patient himself states [i]"Call of Duty was somewhere I felt accepted for the first time in my life, I was never helped by my parents or my school. I liked gaming because people couldn't see me, they accepted me as my online character - I could be good at something and feel part of a group.”[/i] Looking at the research carried out so far it becomes obvious that there is an unwillingness to examine social, economical or even emotional factors present in test subjects, instead many researchers seem happy enough to rely on anecdotal evidence to draw a conclusion. Video games are not in and of themselves addictive, however much like any entertainment that contains an element of risk / reward patterning, they can become something of a compulsion. To those with emotional problems the escapism offered by video games can manifest in behaviour that in many ways seem identical to certain forms of physical and mental addiction, however breaking the addiction cycle in the case of video games rarely does anything to rescind the underlying emotional problems. In reverse treating the emotional problems, almost always has been shown to decrease dependancy for those diagnosed with video game addiction. [u][b]Scientific research has shown a causal relationship between violent videogames and an increase in youth aggression.[/b][/u] This is another theory that has been posited several times in research papers on “Media Effects” an area that has so far produced over 300 studies into the effects of media violence, the majority of which have been inconclusive. Several though claim that there is a direct link between violent video games and increased aggression amongst youths, but as Henry Jenkins (Director of Comparative studies at MIT) points out in his essay on the subject; [i]“Many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand.”[/i] Furthermore the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol 31(10), Oct, 2001 concluded that Playing a violent video game did not increase the aggressive moods of children. In fact compared to a paper and pencil games the opposite was true, violent video games actually increased the positive moods of children. Unfortunately this leaves us with quite a problem, as most research papers do not explain their methodology in anything like the detail that would be required for the reader to obtain an objective viewpoint, of all the studies published all that could be concluded was that they found a correlation (not a causal relationship) that simply shows that aggressive people tend to like aggressive entertainment and that feelings of isolation, anger and powerlessness often pre-exist a compulsion to enjoy violent media including but not limited to video games. To use a bad analogy, it's not owning a gun that makes you want to kill people, it's wanting to kill people that makes you want to own a gun. [u][b]Video games are responsible for an increase in youth crime.[/b][/u] One for the Daily Mail readers and luckily one that is easy to debunk as nothing more than a myth. In America at least the rate of juvenile violent crime has fallen over time to a 30 year low, in England youth crime has been reported to have steadily increased over the past 15 years, however the CIVITAS factsheet on youth crime in England and Wales states: [i]“Genuine concerns remain about trends in some categories of serious offending involving young people – notably an association between the use of weapons, gang membership and drug dealing in major cities. There is, however, no evidence of any increase overall in youth crime in the past ten years – or in the proportion of serious or frequent young offenders.”[/i] It’s worth noting that violent youth crime is responsible for a relatively small percentage of the crime statistics, first time offences are down 21% and the largest (in fact disproportionate) increase is in young female offenders. If you take a closer look at the available crime statistics 25% of boys and 40% of girls claim that they have experienced violence in the home. Of prisoners aged between 16 – 20 around 85% show signs of a personality disorder of those 10% show signs of psychotic illness. In 2007, there were over 1,000 self-harm incidents among children aged 15 and 17 within the custodial system. Boys in prison aged 15-17 are eighteen times more likely to kill themselves than in the community. Over the years with the increase in tabloid journalism, the demonisation of different subsets of youth culture has become prevalent in our society, this is not to say that there isn't a problem with juvenile crime, but there is an awful lot more that should be considered and examined before laying any portion of the blame at the door of video games. The largest causes of juvenile crime appear according to the majority of independent research to be caused by social and economic forces, to blame any form of entertainment for a perceived yet unsupported increase, does seem in this case to be nothing more than scaremongering. [u][b]Video games have a desensitizing effect on the people that play them.[/b][/u] Again this is as much down to flawed methodology in the research producing a flawed conclusion, media reformers have been campaigning for years that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real world victims, however as Jenkins states; [i]“A child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed”[/i] As Eric Zimmerman (Game designer and play theorist) explains, play is distinctive from reality, he theorizes the principle of the ‘magic circle’ that children enter when at play, this allows the same action in the play world to hold a different meaning than that of the same action in the real world, as Jenkins points out [i]“Media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands their actions on those terms.”[/i] Which does little but prove that violent play of one kind does not lead to anything more than an increase in violent play of another kind, it completely fails to show a causal link to anything within the real world. [u][b]Scientists are impartial and only point out conclusions based on the outcome of their research.[/b][/u] Whilst I wouldn’t go as far as calling shenanigans on any particular paper I did find it interesting that (as is true in many areas of study) several primary researchers seem to be producing many of the studies suggesting a link between violent video games and aggression. Now as I have always understood it, the role of any scientist is to remain agnostic until such point that the research demonstrates an alternative to this viewpoint. However the frequency with which certain names appear on these papers suggest that there may be an argument that some researchers may be starting with a conclusion that they want to arrive at and then (subconsciously even) carrying out research to validate this conclusion. If you take a look at Anderson's paper 'An update on the effects of playing violent video games' 30th Oct. 2003 he points out that their has been considerable research into the effects and impact of exposure to media violence, he then references research that has been carried out on the subject by, Anderson and Bushman 2001, Bushman and Huesmann 2001, Huesmann and Miller 1994, Anderson and Huesmann 2003, Anderson and Bushman 2002a, Bushman and Anderson 2001 and Anderson and Bushman 2002b, out of the 23 papers used as research Anderson himself was responsible for 10 of them. In a science brief written by Anderson; Violent Video games: Myths, Facts and unanswered questions 2003, Anderson cites 10 different reference papers 8 of which were his own works. There is also an argument to be made that studies that show the positive effects of videogames are less likely to be published. Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review by Ferguson, Christopher J.; Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol 12, 2007 concluded that there was a definite publication bias for experimental studies of aggressive behaviour and that studies demonstrating that video games cause violence are more likely to be published.

It doesn't matter who you are. Only, what you will become.

Furthermore. Why not 25? Why not 30 or 40. Lets just ban violent video games and ruin the foundation of everything you know because you're the type who wants a -blam!-in sissy child.