RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Shooting holes in gaming theories  Thu Jul 10, 2008 11:37 pm | |
| Young people are being corrupted by a seductive new form of popular entertainment. Oddly enough, this seems to happen in every generation.
In his 1883 book Traps for the Young, US postal inspector Anthony Comstock warned of the sinful hazards of reading dime novels. In his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, child psychiatrist Fredric Wertham warned of the psychosexual perils of poring over comic books.
In their 2008 book, Grand Theft Childhood, Harvard Medical School psychiatrists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson warn about video games. The gist of their warning: don't jump to conclusions.
Video games have a dual reputation as harmless, exciting fun and as home training systems for mass murderers. Dr Kutner and Dr Olson's book shows that neither characterisation is true across the board, although one is much closer to the truth.
Using a $US1.5 million ($A1.56 million) grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, part of the US Justice Department, the two set out to explore what kinds of video games children aged 12 to 14 play, how they play them, why they play them, and what relationships there might be between game habits and other behaviour.
The couple, who are also the parents of a video game-playing teenage son, surveyed more than 1200 US school students aged 12-14 and 500 of their parents.
Their survey did not directly ask about serious criminal behaviour, in part to avoid children incriminating themselves, but their book uses statistics published by the Justice Department to conclude that "videogame popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions.
Violent juvenile crime in the US reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since."
Mass shootings at schools are the ultimate juvenile crime nightmare, but Grand Theft Childhood cites a US Secret Service study concluding that only "one in eight school shooters showed any interest in violent video games".
The couple recently discussed their study in a telephone interview from their home office in Boston."
What we were really looking at was the issue of violence and the typical child. That's something where we don't see evidence of any sort of worrisome connection," Dr Kutner said."
At least not the big scary stuff, the going out and shooting or stabbing someone," Dr Olson added.
However, they did find that youths who listed M-rated games among the ones they had played "a lot" in the previous six months were significantly more likely to have problems of a less dramatic nature, such as getting into fights with other children, getting into trouble at school or shoplifting."
It's true but it needs to be put into perspective, in that the majority of kids who play them still do not get into trouble," Dr Kutner said."
Different groups are cherrypicking our results. There are a lot of avid gamers who are saying that we proved there was no relationship, and that's not true."
We actually found that there was some correlation among normal problematic behaviours and the amount of gameplay and type of gameplay. And at the same time people on the other side, saying games are evil, were saying: 'Look! They're showing this'."
There are times when people will not let information interfere with their preconceived notions."
The survey was conducted at the end of 2004, not long after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released. It is no surprise that the GTA games collectively topped the titles most frequently played by boys.
But they were surprised to see the notoriously violent series come second on the girls' list (after The Sims, which didn't even make the boys' top 10)."
Anecdotally, it sounds like (girls) play it a little bit differently than the boys do," Dr Kutner said."
We had a couple of young college student research assistants who were telling us about how they played it," Dr Olson explained. "And they would drive around and go to the mall and shop for clothes and things. But I'm sure there must be some girls who are also playing it to get their anger out, though, and that's what our 'reasons for play' questions suggested."
Many boys are using violent games to manage their emotions and get their anger out and so on, but there's a substantial number of girls who may be doing that as well."
Boys who vent their frustrations by shooting monsters are not likely to do the same with people because they have a better grasp of the distinction between fantasy and reality than adults sometimes give them credit for.
One finding pointing at this idea is that kissing and swearing were the two things that boys mentioned most often when describing why they thought their younger siblings should not be allowed to play certain games.
Dr Olson said that "swearing and kissing ... are things that they or their little siblings can do in real life.
That really struck us as great evidence of how good they were at distinguishing fantasy versus reality, if they were zeroing in on the two things that were possible to do in the real world."
You know," she joked, "girls are much scarier than zombies, because girls are real."
Discussing boy-girl relations in a more serious vein, Dr Olson described a game called Def Jam Vendetta, which features "rappers that are wrestling or fighting each other. And as you get higher in the levels, you start to win women as trophies."
The sexism is something that I think Larry (Kutner) and I both strongly object to. Were our son 13 or 14 today, I would have much more concern with him playing a title that glorifies sexism and (shows) women as objects to be won than a game that has him blasting away at some aliens."
LNK
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