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121 Comments
- Nathan07, on 10/12/2007, -1/+71Quick someone e-mail these stats to Jack Thompson.... Seriously wtf is going on in our government that they are wasting time voting on bills about a non-existent problem when there are serious problems to deal with.
- davidlow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+71Hmm... Kids who grew up with violent video games are less violent. That's pretty significant, I'd say.
- jguy584, on 10/12/2007, -3/+63I dont think the conclusion drawn from this should be "Video games make kids less violent" but rather "Video games dont effect real world decisions"
- keitho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+51you are talking about a guy who would argue his own birth date with his mother.
- phpirate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+42He knows this. He ignores it, though. He makes it his job to ignore the facts and go after video games, no matter how stupid his arguments are, people will believe him and thats how he gets money.
- sceebacny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+44Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jack Thompson.
- sshanafe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+40Maybe humans naturally have a touch of violence and aggression they need to relieve. Video games may be a safe and effective way of doing that. Then we have kids who don't feel the need to take these aggressions out in the real world, and thus crime drops.
- Anth741, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37Truth is... bad parents raise bad kids.
- drinkGreen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+35yes, video games are to blame. If it weren't video games, I might get mad at someone and actually hit THEM, instead of going home and playing GTA and killing a video game character.
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31Woah, stop the presses! raitchison has anecdotal evidence! The Department of Justice must be informed of this new development immediately!
- TheSavageNation, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Have you guys read the book: "Freakonomics"? It claims that the crime rate has been lowered due to the people that would most likely produce children who would cause crime are having abortions. It can be seen by looking at the declining crime rate in the 90's and the legalization of abortion in the 70's. BTW, i am not making a claim for abortion.
- Anth741, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20All seriousness though, I'm 18 and I consider myself to have good parents. They never let me watch violent television when i was young, or play really violent games when i was young. There was never fighting going on around me, I was put in karate and I learned when violence was OK.
That's parenting, choosing what your kid is exposed to, that's your job. Its not MPAA's, its not the governments job its YOUR job. Sure its EASIER to point fingers at the video game industry but who do you think buys these 11 year olds these 50 dollar games on 300 dollar systems? ( Hint hint allowance maxes at around 10 bucks.) - MasterGrief, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19After all, he IS a lawyer.
- Pharaoh777, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14I'm pretty sure the conclusion is: It's better to let kids vent their anger in a violent game, than letting the get violent againts another person. How hard is it to believe that kids (and adults) need to escape sometime?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12The fact is that Video games give kids an outlet for agression, rather than start a fight at School the kid goes home and has a killing spree in GTA.
Video games also teach cause and effect quite well, you kill someone in GTA, the police chase you, you kill more people, more police chase you, and so on and so forth.
The fact is, if you can do what you want in a Video game, you're less likely to try it in real life because "you've already done it" and have learned the consequences behind it. - Vouksh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14I'm 17 years old, have played violent video games all my life (Duke Nukem/Doom FTW!) and I'm one of the more relaxed people. I hate getting in fights, and while I may sometimes act/talk as if I'm violent, most people know i'm messing around. However I do know I would probably be violent if it weren't for an outlet: video games. When I get POed, I just fire up a game, put on god mode, and blast away. A lot better than going around and being violent to everyone.
- elhaf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Videogames? Their violent influence is so last year. Don't you know that myspace is now the root cause of all of society's ills?
- olaugh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The real lesson from Freakanomics is to be suspicious of explanations from people who have agendas. No one ever made the connection between abortion and crime because nobody stood to gain from it. Freakanomics' chapter on abortion was excellent because it had control groups, since the states had different abortion laws. The Gamerevolution piece is worthless and it doesn't establish causality. Just because most of us agree with the result doesn't mean it's not crap.
Still the simple fact that youth crime is going down and not up is certainly worth noting. - thedonquixote, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I claim abortion.
- GTAcrimelord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8While you're at it, cc that email to Hilary Clinton with the subject heading: Stick this in your pipe and smoke it!
- originalcvk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@raitchison
Did you not see the part about an 11 year decline? I'm not positive, but if my primitive mathematical skills serve me right, 2001 is not 11 years ago. - Quactaur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7That's a great book!
Back on topic, it's only a matter of time now that they turn from video games = violence, to video games = apathetic society. - WeeklyGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The mainstream media will never accept video games as the cause, anyway. They will throw up their VIDEO GAMES ARE VIOLENT blinders and move on.
- myFriendDerrik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Of course video games are to blame:
Johnny: Hey Billy, wanna go commit some youth crimes?
Billy: What? You mean go OUTSIDE?! HELL NO! - missflibbles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Keep villifying videogames and TV and not the parents that allow these things to happen.
- kakwakas, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Finally I have actual statistics I can use for that argument I've been using for years...
Hillary Clinton and Jack Thompson will probably ignore this, of course. - Nobi-Wan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I blame the decline in youth violence as a result of no good Mortal Kombat games released recently. That, and Van Damme and Arnold haven't been in decent movies for a while, either.
- rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11Nice unbias source: gamerevolution.com hehe
- Skab, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4send this article to your senators and congressmen.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Increase in teen violence! Researchers to blame?
- Kosterfield, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Video games are the way the Playstation generation takes out frustration. We want to kill someone, we boot up GTA and have at it. Want to rob a bank? Same thing. We get a lot of the same emotional release, but we don't hurt anyone real in the process. They are making us less violent, or perhaps rechanneling that violence into another controlled world.
- DoctaStooge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4When you control the experiment, you can make the outcome look however you want.
- betterth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Maybe if the parents stopped buying them bigmacs and hot pockets and got their asses out of work and made a real dinner, these kids wouldn't be the size of an ocean liner at 8. Don't blame the games, blame the parents. Who lets them play the games? Who feeds them? Who allows them to not exercise?
- cogsprocket, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6@ raitchison
If you look at the charts, however, you'll notice that the decline in violent crime does not begin in 2001. While I'm not saying you don't have a valid point, I will say you cannot take your own personal experience as solid evidence when statistical information shows the exact opposite.
I'll give you an example:
I have a dog. My dog does not attack people. Neither does my neighbors dog or my parents' dog. If, however, there were solid numbers to demonstratet that most dogs attack people would I be justified to say it is innaccurate based on the three dogs I know? - POKETNRJSH, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Crime in your area may be up, but overall it could be down
- glucoseboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Of course, obesity and diabetes among young people has grown significantly since the introduction of the PlayStation2.
(it's related to the crime drop as well, kids too fat or tired to go out and commit crime.) - omnithought, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3...and Joe Lieberman. I may lean left, but Hillary will never get my vote simply because of her stance on censorship. Screw her.
- slumbuzzle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"The most peaceful generation of Americans in recorded history is being shoved through metal detectors, having their civil rights violated on a daily basis, are the victims of unreasonable search and seizure, and are treated with constant suspicion."
Sounds like we need to be more aggressive, not less so. - saska, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@Anth741: Although I personally believe kids should be exposed to the realities of the world as long as we parents are willing to actually TALK to them about what they're seeing, you raise a point I keep wondering about myself - namely, what 11 year old kid is running around with $50+ in cash, unsupervised, in a video game retailer? Too many parents claim they don't know what their kids are buying, and yet they either had to pay for the game themselves or give the kids the cash to buy them.
- Cander, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3haha. Nice. Digg is pretty popular too. When will it get blamed?
- cogsprocket, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4The sad fact is that this information is freely available to the public. Since we live in the RSS age, however, the public doesn't go lookin for this data. The public wants a feed directly to this information and in almost every case the hungriest dog barks loudest.
I actually did a breakdown of the numbers in the initial graph sometime a few months ago. The crimes that seemed to be pinned on video games most often are the ones that have seen a greater decrease in the past 20 years. While it's not proof positive that video games have a cathartic effect and I would never say that they do, it is proof positive that video games do not by their nature create murderers and rapists.
"Let's take a closer examination of this chart and the data on hand. According to the data that feeds this chart total violent crime was at 47.7 per thousand people. Murder was .1 per thousand, rape 2.5 per thousand, robbery 6.7 per thousand, aggravated assault 12.5 per thousand and assault 25.9 per thousand. The most recent results (2004) show violent crme at 21.1 per thousand, murder stands at the same number of .1 per thousand, rape at a mere .4 per thousand, robbery at 2.1, per thousand, aggravated assault at 4.3 per thousand (nearly 1/3 of the opening result) and assault at 14.2 per thousand (nearly half).
If that information isn't amazing enough given our understanding that violent video games are murder simulators there's more data. The trend doesn't even really begin to decline until 1995. 1993 saw the release of the computer game Doom which many anti-video game activists use to prove that video games caused players to have violent tendencies, yet two years later we begin to see an increased trend in the fall of violent crime. In the past decade we have seen a decrease in violent crimes committed while we see a rise in simulated violence in the way of video games. How is this possible when we all know that violent video games breed killers?"
Without the intention to spam, mind you, I'd rather post this in a comment then spam this site with links to my own blog-drivel. - Adune0Warrior, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Im have seen this on digg before I even printed it out too. It is such a great story but its just like when they thought that rock n' roll made kids do bad things it will pass..... hopefully.
- megamorph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You're right but video games still do not wholesomely target the actual problem: anger. We still have insidious habits of getting angry. Could we just be peaceful in the first place instead of expending our time "releasing" the anger? (I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to give a suggestion to those who play video games to channel anger.)
- thedonquixote, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ja1217
imagine a quote box here like digg had bbcode
[quote]
thedonquixote: I claim abortion
[quote]
ja1217: Just be glad your parents didn't.
[/quote]
[/quote]
How do you know they didn't? Hmmm?
its sounds alot kewler in my head, cause Homer Simpson is saying it.
(>^.^)> -- Hugs? - wirelesshnic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Please should stop blaming the things around them for there problems and deal with them. It is so much easyer to point the finger and sue than it is to sit down and have a talk with junior. Just like any other normal human being kids have choices and a brain that can eater think for themselves or jump on the bandwagon. Your job as a parent is to get them to think for themselves and teach them about the things they are exposed to. When you see a bees nest you tell your kid not to mess with it becouse they sting and it could hurt. You don't sue the bees for being on your property and endangering your kids health! Same with video games, teen pregnancy etc... You explain what is going on and learn to adapt and change.
"People are always afraid of what they do not understand" - drinkGreen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@megamorph
no.
humans have always been violent and angry. I think trying to force people to just stop getting mad is going to be much harder than simply taking their video games away. Instead, people re-focus their anger to something else. Some go running until they calm down, some hit punching bags, some sleep, and others play games.
Pretty soon, the re-focusing of the anger IS killing the anger. If you play games to burn off anger, after while it becomes natural I think. If something that makes you angry happens, your brain almost immediately calms you down, saying "It's ok, we'll play some video games when we get home" - LiterateWolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a national trend, not a local one. Think first.
- Pharaoh777, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Aggression against oppressors is never a bad thing.
- ja1217, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ donquixote
Just be glad your parents didn't. - Neoanarchist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It has been scientifically proved that violent situations (to a reasonable degree) in which the "good guy" wins, or is at least fighting "evil", is healthy for males young and old alike. It stimulates our brains in a healthy fashion and instills a sense of right and wrong on a fundamental level. Now games like Grand Theft Auto I don't think can be applied to this but if parents would stop blaming everything/one but themselves, grow up, and raise a child correctly any kid could play any game and be fine. It all starts with the parents, not the game companies, not the retail stores selling it, not the kids who buy it, but the parents who allow it or miss it.
America has gone from the land of the free to the land of the freedom of responsibility. If you ***** up, you sue someone because it's their fault you're a dumb piece of ***** and don't know hot coffee is HOT or that if you don't ***** raise your kid right there's a chance he'll go be a ***** Dahmer.
In conclusion: If parents take responsibility for their ***** off spring (no pun intended) and instill a concrete idea of right and wrong, and real and not real in their children at an early age, we'll all be better off. -
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