POLL: Video Game Addiction

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hehehe, well at least everyone here is willing to admit it's their own fault...
You shouldnt try to argue that pc (media) violence has anything to do with violent behaviour, because there's absolutely no way to prove a correlation... and logic isnt always the best way to look at it iether...
I would like to say something regarding the original question, I dont think manufacturers are at all at fault here, because games arent illigal... If anything the video game industry treats their customers well. A good game usually mean the manufacturers didnt cut corners, and made an exceptional product, something you dont often see with a lot of other things you buy...
this issue is really just about gaming and gamers themselves... manufacturers are just businessmen, as long as game CD's dont come with cocain sprinkled onto them, they shouldnt even be mentioned.

 

Sure there is. If increases in the violent content of games and film were accompanied by an increase in violent crime, that would be very strong evidence of violence in our media having some effect on violence in our society. Unfortunately for those trying to make that very argument, the exact opposite has been happening for the last 20 years or so.

 

LOL, I'm not as ignorant as you think hahaha. I meant there's a lack of studies done to support that claim... and by the way, simply because one trend is accompanied by another wouldnt prove it iether... this kind of thing would require very tedious statistical analysis...

 

I don't think you are ignorant. Far from it, actually. I also agree with you that "trend matching" would not, in and of itself, constitute "proof". If the trends did match, though, I think we can agree that there would likely already be a large body of research available on the matter. Since, however, there is such a clear divergence between between violence in media and violence in society present in the available statistics; and the studies that have been conducted have largely been inconclusive (even the study brought before congress when they had their V-chip fit was considered inconclusive) there just aren't going to be a lot of people willing to waste their time researching this one. (Which, I think, was your point to begin with.)

 

Not at all. It would be very strong evidence that the two phenomena are linked, but it does NOT tell you that the first is influencing the second. Why not say that increased violence in society has an effect on the content of games and film? Why not say that a third factor is influencing violence in both games and real life?

There's a big difference between regression and correlation in satistical analysis. "Increases in the violent content of games and film were accompanied by an increase in violent crime" is regression. "Violence in our media having some effect on violence in our society" is a correlation. If two variable are regressive, it does NOT tell you ANYTHING about a possible correlation between (no, it doesn't even make it more likely).

(Sorry if this sounded too academic )

 

It quite clearly (inductively......admittedly not deductively) would draw a correlation. What it would fail to do is establish the particulars of the causal relationship. If we always experience an increase in violent crime whenever their is an increase in violent content in our media and this pattern predictably continues for 20 or 30 years, it is very highly likely that there is a corellation since the odds of experiencing a 20+ year consistent and predictable statistical anomaly are really damn low. A correlation, however, is not telling you who is causing who to do what.

 

@ Felinoid:

You're thinking of The Basketball Diaries with Leo DiCaprio, but I never heard that movie in relation to Columbine. There was a school shooting on the EastCoast where the kid did exactly what Leo did during the dream scene. Other violent teenager caused crimes were blamed on Natural Born Killers. Which was only mentioned briefly in reference to Columbine.

@ w. d.

I never said the manufacturer's caused a thing. If you'd actually read the post EXPLAINING the derned poll you would have understood that I was doing a mirror post that was on a tv show. I wanted to get the Sorcerers involved. So quit being dumb and read a post before responding to it.


If two things being compared involve one or more of the same elements a link is present if they are following the same trend. Therefore, if VIOLENCE in media increases and VIOLENCE perpetrated by target audience of that media (teens) increases the two are linked. Since teen violence has decreased in quantity but increased in the scale of violence when it does occur something else must be looked at.

 

Don't forget that there is a third possibility I mentionned above - that your two variables are not linked in any way but are both being influenced in parallel by a third (possibly unknown to you) variable.

Now, I personnally believe (though I have absolutely no evidence to draw upon, so you're more than welcome to disagree) that this third variable does exist, and that it, real-life violence and game/media content are all linked together in some kind of vicious circle, and that each one is feeding (and being fed by) the other two. I have no idea what this third variable is, but I think it is a social problem that's been getting worse over the past 50 or so years.

Why would it not work on forever? I think most of us at some point or another experience strong emotions in a context where we cannot deal with it properly, and end up channeling our anger elsewhere. If you're angry at your boss, how can you "deal with it"? All you can do is take out on something. Lots of people I know take it out on their underlings. I personally take it out on Doom and Quake, and that anger management has worked quite well for years (decades ). Considering I've not yet even felt the need to kick inanimate object, I seriously doubt I'll go buy a shotgun tomorrow because it's not working anymore. No, if someone suddenly decides they want to recreate Doom with a real shotgun and real people, then these people were not balanced to begin with. Doom might have given them the exact image of how to carry it out, but I seriously doubt it "caused" them to turn into psychotic madmen.

 

I just need to chime in again to point out that, at least in the United States, violent crime has actually been on the decline since the early '80's. There is no statistical link whatsoever between violent crime and violence in our media. At least there isn't in the US. In fact, the studies conducted (and there have been quite a few) either came up inconclusive or simply "backfired".....often pointing to the exact opposite conclusion they were intended to (and no one is interested in seriously claiming that violent content in media leads to less violence within society for what I imagine are fairly obvious reasons).