Increased violence is only one many possible reactions. How about increased theft/shoplifting? Coercive behavior? Tendency to make threats? Even just swearing more often?

I am now 23, almost turning 24. I play games from every kind since my 10-11 years old.

Never even been on a fist fight. ;)

I have said that a lot, at least now i have proof you have to be insane to be "extremely" violent after playing games. Several examples not needing to be stated... But at least gaming is a measure of social competence, although even that can become skewed...

that VT student was a violent game player and exactly followed all those playing scenes in the university! Stop lying Mr.Harvard!

It all started when I first played GTA3. I played it again and again, until I craved more. Eventually, I joined the marines to get more action. In 2003, My fetish was fulfilled. I was flown over to Iraq, and me and my fellow buddies decided to tear it up. Rockstar: you have made me all that I can be.

"51% of male children who played 15 hours or more of violent games per week were involved in fights in the past year compared to 28% who played regular video games."

We all know that correlation does not imply causation but their explanation is dubious. Violent video game players were almost twice as likely to engage in real life violence; just a coincidence, right? Maybe. Were the violent kids drawn to the violent games? It would be easy enough to control for this by randomly assigning children to a non-violent game group and a violent game group. If there was or was not then that would be strong evidence for or against a causal relationship between the two. Seriously, this needs more or better research.

Exactly what I was thinking. Also, how do they define "fights"? They mean hard-core fist fights where there are injuries? or some kids pushing each other? There are so many questions here. I would speculate people drawn to the heavy violent video game playing probably have a natural inclination to fighting/aggression anyways, right?

Ummm... have you ever thought that you already had a predisposition for violence when you played the GTA games, and that you played the games to sate that predisposition, as opposed the games creating your violent self? Think about it...

Games cause violence in the same way Movies and TV shows do... which is why Games are given ratings like the rest. Respect the rating systems, end the controversy and get over it.

*returns to building contraptions in Garry's Mod*

Talk about selective reporting. This article smacks of bias from start to finish. Fair enough- correlation may not be causation, but the idea that video games are a measure of social competence is ridiculous. I had plenty of friends who didn't own a television in the 80s who are/were perfectly well-adjusted.

Yes, it was a joke. I don't have any predisposed violence issues. But don't expect a person who has had lead poisoning to be subtle after playing this.
Obviously, I'm incapable of being serious.

This is total crap. Sounds like these guys put together a huge "study" and just attached whatever outcome they wanted. I love how they write off the difference in boys and girls fighting as "probably some issues they had already"

The idea that the VT student played violent video games was something that Jack Thompson assumed like every other piece of evidence he decides he can fabricate out of thin air. They found that he did play video games earlier, but about 9/10 people (males, in general) touch a video game at least once in their lives.

I'm currently reading this Book. I'm 27 an I have played some really violent games, but before I was a gamer I used to watch violent an I'd include passively violent on TV.

Brainwashing & Conditioning. Ounce a person is conditioned into liking something the EGO will help them find more stimulation. Thats why the market is so saturated with violent games.

1: violent games don't help people form violent households.

2: violent games don't make people more violent if they have positive influence else where.

video games are very repetitive and they're for very brainwashing.

The problem with this study is that it compares it to violence caused by other forms of media ("action or Karate-type movies"). So in other words, it's stating the causes isn't any greater than other violent media that your children shouldn't be seeing. flawed. And video games are a measure of social competence? How about we elaborate on that. This study looks like it was hyped to push book sales to worrisome parents more than provide any real conclusion.

"You can try to defend (or attack) all you want, but you cannot prove what you say, it is an hypothesis like any other."
~A very smart person

There's only surveys and polls, but no-one can provide hard evidence.

This is the FIRST time that actual children were used to study the effects of violent games on children.

All the other studies used adults or young adults(in college). So this study is the only one that has relevance to the debate about children.

Also if you read, they aren't saying games have no negative impact, they are warning about the dangers that they found... Go to youtube and search for them on the glen beck show, they aren't exactly pro games, they just know what they are talking about...



TO the person that said VT shooter played games, you are right, he played sonic the hedgehog(it's less violent then tom and jerry cartoons). He was also a clinically insane adult. Hmmmm I wonder which made him do it.... 'Games made him do it' was made up by Jack Thompson, an anti-game attorney who is facing disbarment for misconduct right now...(threating to blow up court houses, putting up gay porn on public websites, spamming all who he disagrees with etc... are you gonna trust a man like him?)

How about parents actually BE parents and not allow their children to play violent video games if they feel so threatened by them. We're waisting a lot of money on ridiculous studies when it's pretty plain and obvious on what to do about violent video games: If you don't approve of it, then don't play it!

Why must our government continue to be presured by lazy, incompetent idiots (i.e. bad parents) who don't want to police themselves, but rather have the government police everyone?

yes, they are not lying, its the truth that they don't know what they are talking about. So they must be telling the truth about their lies, because the truth is I am lying about the truth, seriously, isn't this all relative?

Out of all the people, children and adults that play these games, you are talking about an .001% of the players that commit crimes. That is absurd to say that the games are the factor. I have played violent games since I was 8 years old. I am now 35 and have never been in a fight and am known as one of the most gentle people around.

How come no one wants to put the "Was already Crazy" label on the people doing actual crimes. Loopy predispostion is a much better explanation. Hitler, Stalin, Jack the Ripper, and Charles Manson must have had early releases of GTA. Lucky them.

Lets take some personal reponsability "Crazy is as Crazy Does".

Besides no study is valid without a pre-gaming baseline on each child.

However...the true question is does Harvard turn children into bloodthirsty killers? Perhaps if they go into politics!

LOL

(Bad joke for the day)

Don't blame the VT incident on Video Games.. thats BS, that kid had worse problems than a GTA addiction.

I've been playing violent as well as non-violent video games since my early childhood, and I sleep cuddled up with teddybears. The only hurting I ever did to people was in the form of sarcastic remarks and making people watch re-runs of Power Rangers.

I am the co-author of Grand Theft Childhood.

This article misconstrues the nature of our research and its findings. We did not "sit down and talk to kids after long bouts of game playing." We conducted a detailed, written survey of approximately 1250 7th and 8th graders while they were in school to find out what, why, where, and with whom they played games, as well as other emotional and behavioral aspects of their lives.

Our findings were more nuanced than the headline implies. It's clear that there's no evidence to support the melodramatic claims made by some politicians and pundits that exposure to violent video games (and other violent media) will lead a typical child to act violently in the real world.

However, we did find that those young teenagers who, for example, listed M-rated games among their "most-played over the past six months" were more likely to engage in physical fights and to have behavioral and academic problems at school, such as poor grades and getting into trouble with a teacher. There was also a dose-response relationship: the more M-rated games on their list, the more likely the kids had these problems.

However, you have to keep two things into account before leaping to conclusions about these findings. The first is that these are correlations; we can't say that one causes the other. It may be that those kids who already have violent tendencies are more attracted to M-rated games; there may be a third factor that influences both game selection and real-world violence. The second is that the large majority of kids who listed M-rated games among their most-played did not have these problems. The "base rates" were quite low.

For example, 8 percent of girls said that they had "damaged property for fun" in the previous year. This included 5 percent of the girls who did not list M-rated games and 15 percent of those who did list M-rated games. Although that tripling of risk is statistically significant, it also means that 85 percent of the M-gamer girls (and 92 percent of all the girls) did not damage property. In other words, the vast majority of the kids who were M-gamers did not show this problem. (Two exceptions were boys who said that they had hit or beat up someone over the past year or who had gotten into trouble with a teacher or principal at school; that included 53 percent of all boys and 60% of M-gamer boys.)

You can read details of the study in the book and on our website .

Chain saws make kids more violent.

I play violent video games about 12 hours a day and I never KILL ALL THOSE WORTHLESS FREAKS THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN AND CUT OFF THEIR HEADS AND STUFF THEM INTO THE SPIN DRIER BEFORE PUTTING THEIR LIFELESS HEADS IN FRONT OF THE TV AND MAKING THEM WATCH GILLIGANS ISLAND FOR 48 HOURS.

/rant off

Have a nice day.

that Ralf plays video games 12 hours a day.

I am a professioanl business person. Married with children. I live in an upscale, upper middle income community with zero debt. A graduate of New York University School of Business and I participate in neighborhood fund raising. I began playing video games at the age of 20. I currently am a member of a mature CoD 4 clan and play about 7 hours a week.

No matter how many open or closed research studies are performed concerning how violent video games add to more violence in our society, the results will be inconclusive. Between chemical imbalances in some peoples brains, physical punshment of children by their parents, poor parental mentoring and violent environments where one is raised some of us are destined to exhibit violent behavoir.

Games do not make us violent. Obviously some break the mold and have addictive tendencies. Those individuals should be monitored by their parents. If we could eliminate crack, cocaine, heroine, ecstacy, and other major mind altering drugs from the streets...well..that would be of some benefit. While I do not enjoy or permit my children to play these over the top violent games, for the same reasons that my pre-teen children may not attend R movies..maybe parents should take a closer look as to whats in their childs closet. Better yet...since some parents can't be trusted to behave properly in society to begin with...sell these games as you would alcohol...21 and over only, with proof of I.D.

I have never understood how media can make someone more violent. I am 18 yrs old and I have played video games from age 5. These include the most violent games to Sonic. I have never been in a fist fight. My brother on the other hand has been in several including one in which he managed to make the nicest person I have ever met strike him. We played the same games and watched the same movies. Its not video games its the person. Also violent crime is NOT increasing. It continually decreases. More kids now are playing video games than ever before. This is simply a correlation but I dont see why people get worked up about it.

In several places, it's already required to have photo identification to purchase mature video games. The problem with this is, parents buy it for their kids anyways and don't give a clue. (Then they go and blame video games if their kid does anything wrong, and not their poor parenting skills.) I believe that children need to be of the proper age to play certain video games. Mature games shouldn't be handed to young kids, the same as R movies, but parents do it. Now who's fault is that?

For those wondering, I'm 19 years old. (I'll be turning 20 in September.) I currently attend college, have a perfectly clean criminal record, and have never partaken of drugs or alcohol, nor cigarettes. I do swear, but I got that from my father and my brothers. (My brothers are also much older than I am, for the record.)

Maybe we should start examining parental behavior and stop looking for scapegoats,
-John

we do not need to worry about children we should worry about the adults and the adults are the ones who give there children these games dont let your children have the games but keep making them for the adults or the mature age.

I think they're right!

Well first off I am fourteen. I play around 15-20 hours a week depending on how I feel... as in being sick. Well first off I never been in a fight nor my brother or friends who play as much or more then me. I only play teen and mature games and nothing is wrong with me as you are saying if I play left4dead I will develop zombie killing skills? Its a video game more then 70% of people I know play games such as I do. I agree with this but with younger children