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Research into what affect violent video games has on youth continues

There has been a lot of discussion about what type of negative impact video games have on young gamers -- including addiction, real-life speeding, desensitization, and paranoia. A study published in Psychology, Crime & Law claims that stable personalities are unaffected by violent video games.

Researchers had 110 boys and 15 girls -- mean age of 14.6 -- play Quake II for 20 minutes after obtaining a personality profile of each participant. Anger levels were measured again immediately after the gaming test session ended. Researchers discovered three distinct groups upon analyzing the data. Seventy seven participants maintained the same anger level. Twenty two subjects had anger levels that doubled from the same starting point as unaffected participants.  Eight participants started out a higher level of anger before the test started, but dropped down to normal levels after 20 minutes of game play.

There are two groups that gamers from the study fell into -- stable personalities or gamers whose emotional states can be susceptible to game play.  Angry gamers tend to cool off after game play, where as calm gamers will most likely become agitated.

Regardless of what this particular research team discovered, a possible link between violent video games and real-life violence will continue to be studied by researchers around the world.  The authors of the report understand that any correlation between aggression and anger remains very unclear to researchers, and the next step is to run the tests again with different subjects and different video games.

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By KaiserCSS on 4/6/2007 9:12:49 PM , Rating: 5
I am sick and tired of seeing these bullshit studies pop up on a near-monthly basis. People are taking small issues and blowing them way out of proportion, just like everything else nowadays(*cough*global warming and oil depletion*cough*). Look, all you need is common sense. WoW addicts are gonna have problems because they spend so much damn time playing the game. That's a no-brainer. Maybe someone will get angry while playing Counter Strike and yell expletives at their monitor. 99.99% of the time, they'll simply cool down later, instead of going on some video game rage-induced killing spree. And let's face it people, if a game takes someone over the edge, then there are more serious problems with that person than video games.

People have been saying the same things about violent movies, violent television, suggestive music, you name it, they've tried to find something wrong with it, for years and years and years. Surely it has nothing to do with the lack of responsibility, sense, or morals! Heaven's no, the blame must not lie with the person, it must lie with the games!

Responsibility is the name of the game. Parents, grow some balls and punish your kids for yelling at you when you tell them to put the game away. Check what they're watching. Spend some time and teach them "what's right and what's wrong". It seems so simple, but people simply don't realize that the current generation lacks the most basic of civilized skills, such as, oh I don't know, manners for one.

Freakin' aye people!

/rant




By Ralph The Magician on 4/6/2007 10:17:35 PM , Rating: 5
We live in a world of violence. The US, in particular, has murder rates that are unkown in the rest of the "western" world, gun violence in particular. This stems from somewhere...but where?

Parenting is only a small part of the equation. You can't blame the parents all the time. The problem is deeper than that. It's cultural. It's systemic.

The answer to where this stems from is, in my opinion, quite obvious. It doesn't lie so much in violent movies or television, and definitely not in violent video games. For the most part people can distinguish between reality and fantasy. It lies in the media. The media makes a profit off violent, sensationalist news. They love it. Some guy goes crazy with a sniper rifle and their ratings go through the roof. People can't get enough of this "real violence", and even when they've had enough they can't escape it because it's on every channel.

I've never seen a study done to confirm this theory, but I would hypothesis that if you took two groups of children and simply set one group's cable box to only show cartoons, and the other groups cable box to only show news, the latter would be far more desensetized to violence if that's what they had seen for their childhood (and even adulthood). Now, that doesn't mean everyone who watches the news is going to be violent. That's not what I'm saying. Don't try to tear my words apart.

In countries like Sweden and Denmark, no one watches TV because TV there is terrible. If you do watch the news, it's just...news. It's boring. There are no flashy headlines and expensive transitions and artwork.

In the US, our media loves gun violence. They love it. Murders are great. Murderer only got 15 years? Make sure that's a headline all day long unless another murderer only gets 10. This isn't fantasy violence either. This is the real deal. Real violence.

They're are only really a half dozen comapnies in the US that control media, and all of them have major news networks, and it's all the same. You sit and watch that stuff and the world looks like a horrible place. You see what other people have done, and the consequences that they recieve. You can learn how to rape and kill someone by watching CNN, incase you couldn't figure it out.

I think a lot of people get off on that too. They know that if they create a crime they are going to get airtime. EVERYONE is going to know about it. If you kill several people, you are going to get a whole day devoted to you where companies are going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on reporting your story. You're going to get a fancy nickname, flashing headlines, all this cool fancy artwork. Tens of millions of people will know, at least for the time being, who you are, what you did, and why you did it.

The real question is, "Why do people like watching this? Why is it so high profit? Why are people willing to pay money to know intimate details about the deaths of their fellow man?" How is it that, as a culture, we decided that murder was valuable ? That's the question.

/end rant
/please excuse typos and grammar


By Xietsu on 4/7/2007 3:53:22 AM , Rating: 2
You have completely oversensationalized the focus of the media. There are outlets for those who would have them be their inlets (i.e. there are specific channels and centralizations for these types of goings on within the world, that you deem "violent" and "desensitizing"). The fact is that news agencies do not have this hyped focus for their material. They have there own evaluations I'm sure for what they like to attribute as the occasional shocking or wordly crime. This is irrelevant, because the amount of content that this is in context of a newsgroup's actual full relay is foolish.


By poohbear on 4/7/2007 6:19:29 AM , Rating: 5
its interesting that the BBC in the UK makes most of its revenue from a tv tax that brits HAVE to pay and from selling their programs 9such as blue planet series), so ratings are'nt as important as in the US. over here, everything is about ratings, so naturally, headlines that improve ratings and terrify or tantalize the viewer into watching are enouraged. imagine how less sensationalist and more journalistic CNN would be if it didnt get most of its revenue from ratings.


By rnnh on 4/7/2007 11:53:48 AM , Rating: 2
The US does have a different attitude to violence.

Most western cultures say that violence is unacceptable.

The US on the other hand has a culture where violence is acceptable (even admirable) as long as you don't cross a certain 'line'.
Some people will obviously find it difficult, or end up in situations that make it difficult, to see where that line lies.


By Christopher1 on 4/8/2007 5:07:52 PM , Rating: 2
That's the big problem in the world today. Violence against 'sex offenders' is celebrated by some (I don't celebrate it one WHIT, because some people I know who are good people would be called sex offenders if the police knew what they were doing).
Violence against children in order to 'teach them morality' is celebrated, i.e. the 'spare the rod and spoil the child' nonsense.

We need to get a society that says that ANY, repeat, ANY violence against anyone in real life is unacceptable, and YOU are the one who is going to end up in jail if you attack someone else, regardless of what they have done to you or your family.
It's the job of the law to punish people who have brought 'harm' to others, not those people themselves.


By mindless1 on 4/9/2007 5:30:24 AM , Rating: 2
I could not disagree more. Violence is a very real deterrant and if that is gone there are those who will constantly do everything they can to cause problems.

I think the society will be better if YOU are in prison than if any violence is intolerable.

Always remember something. The very peace your society enjoys is kept by violence. You want to pretend it doesn't happen but that's what wars or threats of war are, and they would be empty if not exercised from time to time.
So what you really mean is you want a special privledge, you want to be pampered with nothing effecting you but to have the benefits of others protecting you WITH VIOLENCE to maintain a peaceful state.

What you really mean is, it's ok for law enforcement or soldiers to be violent if following some prescripted rules placed upon them, but that no individual could possibly be as just when interpreting any particular situation. Quite the opposite is true, when each situation can be interpreted without a prescripted manditory response, justice is more often had.

The issue is not violence or not. It is mental imbalance towards harmful tendencies. It is a matter of whether the person who would take action, is doing harm in any form to another person. You might think that it's not so bad if it's not a violent harm, but in reality that is all that keeps the harm in check, it's a balance that for every old lady somebody robs, there is a real danger that thief might get more than just cursed at.

To put it another way, violence is too broad a category to lump all acts as you did. Acting out in anger would be a problem, but a non-emotionally caused, forceful exercise of justice is violent, and sometimes necessary.

You are correct that it's the job of "the law" to punish, but seeking punishment is not the only cause of violence. You write "If you attack someone else", but again it's not the only scenario where there might be violence.

Suppose this - Guy comes up and proceeds to rape your wife. You merely say "no" and he laughs. You call the police. Ok, now you are going to just watch him rape your wife until the "law" gets there, or are you going to have to get violent to get something done?

The problem is not violence, it's people that try to lump everything together into black and white instead of seeing all the shades of grey. Same goes for people that attack one another unjustly, they don't see the alternatives, they go straight to black.


By bozilla on 4/7/2007 4:48:39 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
We live in a world of violence. The US, in particular, has murder rates that are unkown in the rest of the "western" world, gun violence in particular. This stems from somewhere...but where?

Parenting is only a small part of the equation. You can't blame the parents all the time. The problem is deeper than that. It's cultural. It's systemic.

The answer to where this stems from is, in my opinion, quite obvious. It doesn't lie so much in violent movies or television, and definitely not in violent video games. For the most part people can distinguish between reality and fantasy. It lies in the media. The media makes a profit off violent, sensationalist news. They love it. Some guy goes crazy with a sniper rifle and their ratings go through the roof. People can't get enough of this "real violence", and even when they've had enough they can't escape it because it's on every channel.

I've never seen a study done to confirm this theory, but I would hypothesis that if you took two groups of children and simply set one group's cable box to only show cartoons, and the other groups cable box to only show news, the latter would be far more desensetized to violence if that's what they had seen for their childhood (and even adulthood). Now, that doesn't mean everyone who watches the news is going to be violent. That's not what I'm saying. Don't try to tear my words apart.

In countries like Sweden and Denmark, no one watches TV because TV there is terrible. If you do watch the news, it's just...news. It's boring. There are no flashy headlines and expensive transitions and artwork.

In the US, our media loves gun violence. They love it. Murders are great. Murderer only got 15 years? Make sure that's a headline all day long unless another murderer only gets 10. This isn't fantasy violence either. This is the real deal. Real violence.

They're are only really a half dozen comapnies in the US that control media, and all of them have major news networks, and it's all the same. You sit and watch that stuff and the world looks like a horrible place. You see what other people have done, and the consequences that they recieve. You can learn how to rape and kill someone by watching CNN, incase you couldn't figure it out.

I think a lot of people get off on that too. They know that if they create a crime they are going to get airtime. EVERYONE is going to know about it. If you kill several people, you are going to get a whole day devoted to you where companies are going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on reporting your story. You're going to get a fancy nickname, flashing headlines, all this cool fancy artwork. Tens of millions of people will know, at least for the time being, who you are, what you did, and why you did it.

The real question is, "Why do people like watching this? Why is it so high profit? Why are people willing to pay money to know intimate details about the deaths of their fellow man?" How is it that, as a culture, we decided that murder was valuable ? That's the question.


Beautifully said. People don't understand that media in this country is the main factor for pretty much all social behavior and it's mostly bad to be honest.

News are suppose to just tell you what's going on, not go on choppers and follow the shooting and car chases of criminals through the city where most people cheer for them to get killed or to see some crap happening so it makes a highlight of their day.

That's why a huge majority of americans are completely un-emotional and only care for themselves. There's no empathy.


By Ralph The Magician on 4/7/2007 9:53:09 PM , Rating: 2
I often wonder if things could be changed if you had enough capital. That is, one might assume that it would be possible to create a news network that focused on the exact opposite of what today's networks focus on. Since a spin is put on everything, why not have that spin be positive? What if right next to CNN was some other news channel that simply chose not to show violence...at all. Just leave it out. You can get that elsewhere. One might say, "But that's not well-rounded. That's bias!" Well, yeah—it is. So is all news. That's not really the problem you have with it. The problem you have with it is that it isn't showing you what you want , which is violence.

What if instead of 9 out of every 10 headlines being negative, 9 out of every 10 were positive? What if instead of >50% of all the headlines having to do with gun violence, >50% of the headlines had to do with science? Clearly, you wouldn't have much of a viewer base intially, because current demand is focused on violence, but if you were able to ride that out long enough it's possible (at least plausible) that you may be able to create a fresh base interested in such things by targeting a young audience that might grow to demand it. (That's a little bit of a run-on sentence methinks :-P)

It seems entirely possible that you could have positive sensationalist news. You could do all the fancy graphics, artwork and sound effects for people who are doing positive things. Yeah, yeah, you're going to get pseudo-science and all sorts of other things wrapped up in there as well, but is that really any different than what you have now?


By glitchc on 4/7/2007 11:18:38 PM , Rating: 2
Anyone remember "The Running Man"? Not a particularly good bit of acting, but the message was spot on.


By Xietsu on 4/7/2007 3:57:05 AM , Rating: 2
Awesome midget editorial, but your titling was a bit off in circumstance. Nobody has ever lived in an age where common sense was common (grammatical error in yours too, but hey, that's irrespective). The idea of common sense is subjective, so in all sense of the being, there is an everyone without and an everyone with.


By Christopher1 on 4/8/2007 5:13:06 PM , Rating: 2
True. There is no such thing really as common sense. Some people say it is common sense that children should not be allowed to act sexually with themselves and others, while I feel that is not common sense and goes against the children's rights to their own bodies.

Some people say that it is common sense that killing people is wrong, but most children have NO idea what death is until someone sits down and explains to them what it is, so how are they supposed to know that killing someone is wrong until someone explains THAT to them?!

It's time to realize that 'common sense' is what OLDER people take as obvious, but children and some people who have been raised in different societies do not see things as 'common sense' that those older people do.


By Targon on 4/7/2007 8:56:31 AM , Rating: 2
I think you have missed the point here, so I'll attempt to clarify it for you. Most studies try to link video/computer games to violent behaviors, and as a result, they will always find the link they are looking for. In this case, the idea was to identify if it is the games themselves, or the people playing the games that are the reason for the violent behaviors.

The problem that many people have with most studies is that they try to find things that have no basis in reality, just for political reasons. These are the ones that claim that violent video games are the source of violent behavior and crap like that.

What this study says is that it's NOT the violent games that make people violent, it is violent video games combined with people that are mentally unstable in the first place. This is what I have been saying for years. A stable teenager does NOT become violent from playing violent video/computer games, but mentally defective teenagers(and adults for that matter) MAY become violent from playing violent video games.

This concept follows the well understood concept that most people who watch violent movies don't turn around and turn into murderers, but there are some that do. Being inclined to violence in the first place will tend to lead these people to violence, and it can take any stimulus to trigger the behavior. A book, a movie, a game, or real life events can trigger violent behaviors.

So, don't blast a study that comes to a reasonable conclusion just because all the other studies are flawed. Take any mentally disturbed teenager, and based on events in his/her life, and a "negative stimulus", and then watch the behaviors of that teenager. In many cases, the negative stimulus(movie, book, game) will bring out increased negative behaviors.

Some of the other comments here are also very valid. Those who are inclined by personality to violent behaviors will tend to be drawn to violent books/movies/games. That being the case, the only way to limit possible destructive/violent behavior from these people is to limit THEIR access to the negative stimuli. Of course, the only fair way to do this would be a national/international system where every person is evaluated regularly to see if they are stable enough for the entertainment in question. Those who are mentally unstable should NOT be given access to violent games/movies, but that does not mean that violent games/movies should be banned or censored.

Some may dislike the idea, but removing violent images from the environment of people who may not be stable and working to make them stable would probably help avoid problems in schools. The problem that most would see with this idea is that most people in a position to evaluate others tend to be clueless and look for problems where there arn't any.


By Christopher1 on 4/8/2007 5:19:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Some may dislike the idea, but removing violent images from the environment of people who may not be stable and working to make them stable would probably help avoid problems in schools. The problem that most would see with this idea is that most people in a position to evaluate others tend to be clueless and look for problems where there arn't any.


The problem is that many of the people who are 'unstable' and prone to violence are prone to violence because other people (friends, family members, etc.) have taught them that violence is okay by showing them violent things in real life.

I mean, 99.9% of the murders and sexual serial killers out there saw that violence that they perpetrated on others at an early age and were told by adults that it was okay or it was excused by adults because the woman or man in question was a prostitute or some other class that society thinks it is okay to beat upon.

What we need to do is tell children PERIOD that violence is not acceptable and stop teaching them that adults have the right to use violence against them by BANNING spanking and corporal punishment.
We also have to start teaching them that when one person attacks another person, the person who STARTED the fight will be punished, not the person who defends themself.
I mean, I got into 20 fights in middle school, but I was never punished because I never started the fights, it was always someone else who threw the first punch.


By thartist on 4/10/2007 11:00:34 AM , Rating: 2
Your words are the best reply i've ever read to these BS articles you mention, but this one seems more sensible than others because it doesn't port that "Sensationalist" flag.

Every point you make, i totally agree.

Besides, many times anger only comes because some games are crap and feature frustating gameplay, so that is to be expected!


Tautology
By Dactyl on 4/6/2007 6:58:25 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
There are two groups that gamers from the studied fell into -- stable personalities, and the other group was comprised of gamers whose emotional states can be susceptible of game play.
The only players' whose levels of anger changed were the players whose levels of anger changed.

Unless they're going to re-run the test multiple times with the same participants, this study seems completely worthless.




RE: Tautology
By Krenn on 4/6/2007 7:27:50 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
The only players' whose levels of anger changed were the players whose levels of anger changed.


Not quite. They actually measured two separate things; this summary doesn't quite explain it as well as the original article. They had each person take a personality test as well as measure their anger levels before and after.

From the results of the personality test, they had stable vs. unstable personality groups. From the anger levels, they had three groups - people who didn't change; people who became much angrier; and people who calmed down. (Actually, there are a few people left over - 77 + 22 + 8 = 107 != 125.)

Then they determined a large correlation between the "stable personality" group and the group whose anger level didn't change. It's not that they defined one by the other - it's that the groups overlapped. And the unstable group overlapped with the two groups whose anger level changed.

Notice that the people who started angry were probably angry because they had to fill out a personality profile test... they're the type of people who like activity, probably, so of course the games calmed them. Also, they threw out the 10 worst people for "bad behavior." This means the study is really on cooperative teenage gamers.

Here's one study I've never seen done: What type of games do violent people like to play: Myth, Tetris, Railroad Tycoon... or Quake and Doom? Nobody would publish an article that says: "Violent People Play Violent Games."


RE: Tautology
By KaiserCSS on 4/6/2007 9:19:04 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
What type of games do violent people like to play: Myth, Tetris, Railroad Tycoon... or Quake and Doom? Nobody would publish an article that says: "Violent People Play Violent Games."


No, it wouldn't quite work that way. I grew up playing Doom, and as of now I own many M-rated, decently violent games. And I've never started a fight in my life. I've never seriously threatened to kill anyone. I am by no measure a violent person. I just enjoy first person shooters, that's all.


RE: Tautology
By exanimas on 4/6/2007 11:16:29 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think he was stating that all who play violent video games are violent, just that violent people DO prefer violent video games.


RE: Tautology
By FITCamaro on 4/6/2007 11:36:49 PM , Rating: 1
That's not necessarily true though. As the poster above says, I am not a violent person, however, I do enjoy violent games. For me, they're a stress relief. Instead of taking out my aggression from daily annoyances on the real world, I do it in video games.


RE: Tautology
By NarcoticHobo on 4/6/2007 11:47:47 PM , Rating: 2
Completely missing the point. He was saying that violent people tend to play violent video games. It only works in that direction, it is a statement about violent people and what they like to do. Not at all does it imply that people who play violent video games are violent people.


RE: Tautology
By Bruce 1337 on 4/7/2007 4:31:57 AM , Rating: 2
The poster is asking a very valid question. I'd imagine many violent people are attracted to violent games. He's not saying the games cause the violent behavior, which is what the media certainly implies when it finds out that violent people tend to play Doom.


RE: Tautology
By TSS on 4/9/2007 7:40:52 AM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see a study on known voilent kids (just kids who are known to whatever the US mental health instance is as violent) and their recreational activity's. because every study looks at violent behavior then tries to tie or untie it to violent games. If they look at a large number of subjects (not 100 thats far too few, i could find that number in a desert town sorta speak) and what they prefer to do, other possible causes might arise instead of trying to determine if 1 thing is the cause.

not the clearest of explanations but you'll catch my drift :)


A point to be made...
By Spartan Niner on 4/6/2007 11:41:56 PM , Rating: 3
A point that is not often made is that a good study should try very hard to disprove a hypothesis rather than "prove" a hypothesis. It is theoretically impossible to prove a hypothesis to be true due to confounding factors and imperfect experimental setups, but it is entirely possible to disprove a hypothesis. If a hypothesis withstands repeated, peer-reviewed attempts to disprove it it becomes scientific theory. I would like to see some actually valid studies based on sound scientific method rather than conjectural notions of causation.




RE: A point to be made...
By joex444 on 4/7/2007 12:40:54 AM , Rating: 3
What you have stated is 100% true for scientific fields - Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. I happen to be a student of the last two.

Unfortunately, Psychology, and Sociology are psuedosciences. Your experiments are performed on humans, who are aware of the experiments. The subjects can alter the results, even unconciously. It's very different determining if a game (BTW, old game) causes angry results in a random sample of 15 year olds versus determining the speed of light, or some equally concrete scientific example.

The point is you can't get a result in Psychology. I could, with careful selection, find a group of 110 people where >50% would have an anger increase. I could, for example, pick prisoners or a court ordered anger management group. Theres another part to the story, you have to not only ask if the games change anger levels (BTW, how do you measure this? Hopefully a medical thing, you can't fake a heart rate) in a random sample, but if there are higher levels in subgroups: males, females, white, black, asian, hispanic, upper/middle/lower class, married/divorced/imprisoned/deceased parents. Could be the unstable ones were all lower class whites with imprisoned fathers. What a result that would be!


So...
By Quiescent on 4/6/2007 9:07:44 PM , Rating: 2
How long did it take for them to figure this out?

Obviously only unstable people would actually take it to the real world. They wouldn't think about it just being left behind in a video game.




RE: So...
By Samus on 4/6/2007 10:24:44 PM , Rating: 2
what he said. this isn't rocket science. give a gun to 110 people, and i'm sure at least 20 of them will shoot 'something' in given time.


In other news...
By Lord 666 on 4/7/2007 10:55:09 PM , Rating: 2
Alcohol only affects alcoholics.




RE: In other news...
By encryptkeeper on 4/9/2007 9:49:21 AM , Rating: 2
Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic...alcoholics go to meetings...


Hmmm
By nengel on 4/6/2007 9:50:41 PM , Rating: 3
I wonder if the study took into consideration how well the gamers actually performed in the game. Personally i don't have a problem getting angry when I am averaging 3-5 points per round in TAM, but on a bad day I have to restrain myself from tuning my mouse into a pancake.




By Darthefe on 4/7/2007 3:40:48 AM , Rating: 2
We young gamers always have to get the games over 16 illegaly thats how i got Hitman and etc. Seriously just because a game reflects to the criminal problems of the world and u play the problem they start over rating it like GTA. Seriouly i found nothing in the game which really changed me not to say negativly it was GTA just funny and Dramitic. I have Gears of War and they Put it 18+ prince of Persia is way more nasty and u atcully get to decide how to kill ur enemy Gears of War u just shoot down some Locust in High-Definition which makes it look more realistic when they get shot down, blood spraying all over, and them layin on the floor beggin for mercy and u shooting them down.




Anger and Stats
By juan501 on 4/7/2007 4:57:48 AM , Rating: 2
Personally, I think this study means just about nothing since there was only a small number of test subjects.

Also, I sincerely doubt they took into account how well each subject did while playing the game, as people who do lousy often get frustrated. This frustration could easily skew their results, since not everyone who was more "angry" may have been so due to the violent subject matter.




At least...
By DeepBlue1975 on 4/7/2007 10:56:19 AM , Rating: 2
At least they turned their focus around and switched a bit off of that silly "people are like programmable machines and, hence, all you need is just a nasty video game or violent TV programme just to turn any kid into a violent, serial killing mutant freaks".
This is still not thorough enough, by far, though.




By TheBeagle on 4/7/2007 12:16:46 PM , Rating: 2
It is a very unfortunate fact of life that there are, indeed, quite a number of "unstable" kids in our collective society. This is also unfortunately a direct result of the breakdown in family units, the loss of basic moral/societal values, and a general acceptance of violence as a form of semi-acceptable dispute resolution technique. This is coupled with absentee parents, and a juvenile justice system that looks for any reason to excuse or rationalize the grossly anti-social, even criminal behavior of kids. We are also teaching our kids that there are "no consequences" for their behaviors, and these games send that message, at least in a subliminal sense each time they "kill" someone in the game, then rewind and do it again and again.




Phew!
By LatinMessiah on 4/7/2007 7:34:52 PM , Rating: 2
I'm safe.




By encryptkeeper on 4/9/2007 9:48:15 AM , Rating: 2
Study: Violent Video Games Only Affect Unstable Youth

Did anyone ever consider the fact that EVERYTHING affects unstable youths????? THAT'S why they're unstable!!!!

Duh!




Question...
By vortmax on 4/9/2007 1:13:38 PM , Rating: 2
I'm wondering why violent games even exist in the first place? Are they really necessary to have fun on a computer?

Think about it...




Well...
By IceTron on 4/7/2007 5:36:13 AM , Rating: 1
Lets file this under the "No Shit Sherlock" category!




ALL gamers have unstable minds
By cornfedone on 4/6/07, Rating: -1
RE: ALL gamers have unstable minds
By Ralph The Magician on 4/6/2007 10:27:41 PM , Rating: 2
By that kind of logic you could say that anyone that watches any kind of media is unstable. Am I to understand that by your meaning that the only sane people in this world are the Amish?


RE: ALL gamers have unstable minds
By viperpa on 4/6/2007 11:12:06 PM , Rating: 4
I watched bugs bunny cartoons for years and I didn't go out and hit people over the head with bats or shoot people. I seen Jaws when I was 10 years old with no ill effects.

To say violent games cause real life violence is bogus. It's not the games, it's how the kids are brought up. If the kids had the right upbringing by there parents, then there shouldn't be a issue.


By GhandiInstinct on 4/7/2007 1:00:40 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed, in this day and age, the number of children having children is growing. Meaning, people in their teens, early twenties, who have the IQ of the average 5 year old, are having babies, and raising them like babies would.

It's an on going cycle that will eventually destroy the US.


By FITCamaro on 4/6/2007 11:43:03 PM , Rating: 1
Uh no. Plenty of gamers are completely functional members of society with far better jobs than the average person. We simply get entertainment out of playing games. The same kind of entertainment as someone gets from watching TV or riding a bike. If getting entertainment from something means you're unstable then you're right. Otherwise you're full of shit and are blaming something on the wrong thing.

I enjoy playing games. Do I feel symptoms of withdrawal by not playing a game for a day? No. I would much rather go out to dinner and have a few drinks with friends then play a video game. Unfortunately, life doesn't let you do that every night.


"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn." -- Seagate CEO Bill Watkins

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