more propaganda, just from a different source,..

Amusungly with no credibility it garners belief and support that what they say is right and what the officials say is wrong.

I went through the page and there are some intresting points in there which can be refuted, but thats not the point of my post.

more with no empirical evidence to back up that games cause violence then how can they 'prove' it

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Leading the "Support our Arrow keys" movement!

Response to # 8:

http://www.iraqbodycount.net

Since, as the general says, "We don't do body counts", an independent group has decided to tally the number of Iraqi CIVILIANS killed in the U.S.'s latest campaign.

Those orders came from a certain cowardly commander-in-cheif who skipped out on his own military responsibilities.

But this wasn't the point of my post at all... I was merely trying to say that perhaps the indifference we U.S. Americans (and others) show towards real violence is more of a factor in kids being prone to violence, not some virtual game they play after school.

Goliath

This comment was edited on Feb 20, 08:39.

...asked pupils in Grades 4 and 5 about their use of media and exposure and attitude toward real-life violence, and then took a measure of their empathy.

Good thing they have their empathy meters. I wonder where they stick something like that...

After playing 'Super Mario Bros' all I wanted to do was jump on other people's heads to make a coin to pop out of their ass.

Heh heh, that sounds like the time I took a hammer to the zoo, in case the gorillas threw barrels at me. They didn't throw barrels, and for that matter, the hammer didn't do much good against what they were throwing.

The connection between game violence and real life violence is real! After playing 'Super Mario Bros' all I wanted to do was jump on other people's heads to make a coin to pop out of their ass.

Needless to say, this behaviour got me into a lot of trouble.

Some of you people need a new hobby, one that involves drugs, vaginas, and various house hold items.

that issue of the Journal of Adolescence was also co-edited by Craig Anderson who had a much criticized paper on that topic published in the journal nature (where he made conclusions far beyond the actual results of his meta analysis of a number of studies). which makes me a lot more suspicious before going into any of the details

right from the gentile study:

"That youth who are more hostile also play more violent video games raises questions of causality. Are young adolescents more hostile and aggressive because they expose themselves to media violence, or do previously hostile adolescents prefer violent media? Due to the correlational nature of this study, we cannot answer this question directly"

looks like the PR got ahead of their actual scientific results

the exposure to doom study is equivocal at best. anyone who follows the heuristics and biases program in social psychology knows that framing effects are well established (in this case exposure to violence), but the trick is to show that the effect is anything more than temporary (studies on framing and racism i've seen produce only a temporary effect), and further, to show whether it is actually a significant /causes/ violence. (the "10 times as likely" in the gentile study could be misleading if the likelihood of getting into a fight without exposure to games is itself low, and also needs comparison to other effects which might be much more significant -- socioeconomic conditions for example -- ill have to have a look at it)

you would think that the genitile study and the doom study proves this in conjunction, but it doesn't unless it controls for all the other relevant variables (a serious problem with most of these studies). and the stories we hear about simple imitation of violence in video games are pretty silly judging by the statistics comparing exposure to violent video games versus actual incidence of the serious violent behavior, the kind we often see in video games.

ordered to kill thousands of innocent people

a little melodramatic perhaps? or perhaps you'd like to share some examples...

This comment was edited on Feb 19, 15:32.

Because idealists like yourself who think with emotions are the kind of people we really want running the world. I can see it now, hell on earth in a sterile and lifeless fasion.

I love how all of these studies are coming out saying that playing violent video games makes kids more prone to violence or listening to Marylin Manson and music with "violent" lyrics makes people prone to violence.

What about the REAL violence that is shrugged off every day by the media, all of these researchers, etc. Specifically, the violence condoned by George W. Bush ("Bring it on") and the proponents of his administration. I mean, if we can continue to ignore the fact that our kids in uniform are being ordered to kill thousands of innocent people, what can we really expect?

Any kid watching CNN and Fox News, with their up-beat music put to the war-is-cool graphics and newscasts has to be getting the message that violence, even in its most fatal form, is okay.

To the authors of the article: Wake up. It's not games that present a virtual violent world that desensitize people to violence, it's our lack of outrage at the real deal.

Goliath

Then 9 out of 10 violent people are insane, going by that logic.

This comment was edited on Feb 19, 14:45.

In other news, 9 out of 10 violent people consider themselves non-violent.

dumbass... this means they aren't non agressive are they?

Come on, that doesn't make sense. I'm not saying the original statement is true, but it's not illogical.

~Steve

This article is based on little more that conjecture and just plain nonsense with little or no scientific basis. The Globe & Mail is a respectable newspaper here in Canada (one of the few we have left.) I'm really surprised they'd print unfounded tripe like this.

Parallax Abstraction

"The study found that teenagers who have non-aggressive personalities but play a lot of violent video games are almost 10 times as likely to get into a physical fight than teens who don't play the games. "

dumbass... this means they aren't non agressive are they?