Insider Gamer’s Loop

(it’s different when it’s real)

Kids in both the U.S. and Japan who reported playing lots of violent video games had more aggressive behavior months later than their peers who did not, according to the study, which appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers specifically tried to get to the root of the chicken-or-egg problem — do children become more aggressive after playing video games or are aggressive kids more attracted to violent videos?

It’s a murky — and controversial — issue. Many studies have linked violence in TV shows and video games to violent behavior. But when states have tried to keep under-18 kids from playing games rated “M” for mature, the proposed restrictions have often been challenged successfully in court.

Read the full article.

[insert opinion here]

I highly recommend you read the article above, in its entirety. Essentially it’s a study that suggests children who play violent video games are more aggressive later in life. And as you can read in the excerpt above, it provides a challenging “chicken and the egg” conundrum.

We’ve had our say on this multiple times before, but there are a couple of key points from this study I wanted to address.

First is imitation; children who watch violence in the media can internalize the message that the world is a hostile place, he explains, and that acting aggressively is an OK way to deal with it.

Also, he says, kids can become desensitized to violence. “When you’re exposed to violence day in and day out, it loses its emotional impact on you,” Huesmann said. “Once you’re emotionally numb to violence, it’s much easier to engage in violence.”

First things first, the world can be a hostile place, and while violence is not an appropriate way to deal with that fact, children will be exposed to that truth one way or another. Secondly, if they’re allowed to watch network news they’ll quickly be exposed to the idea that violence solves problems, and that the world is a very hostile and dangerous place. I suggest CNN, MSNBC, and Fox stop trying to scare the shit out of people 24 hours a day before we go placing the blame for an imbalanced world view on video games.

Secondly, the idea that video games “desensitize” anyone to violence is preposterous. I’ll fully admit that I’m desensitized to fake violence, but at the sight of real violence, even in the slightest instance, I’ll be as disturbed as anyone. None of these studies seem to take into account how people, particularly children, react to real violence. Trying to gauge someone sensitivity to real violence by tracking their reactions to fake violence is ridiculous because they’re entirely different experiences.

I assure you, all of these kids that are supposedly desensitized, if ever put into a situation where they’re exposed to real violence would be horrified. Hopefully they never conduct the study where children are exposed to real violence, but it would go to show the difference in power that polygons on a screen have as compared to the real thing.