Violent Video Games

[Phobia]

You knew it was coming! Comparing violent video games with Sandy Hook

http://living.msn.com/family-parenting/the-family-room-blog-post?post=bd538333-8bec-4711-89bc-48c8bca5e6ca

In the days following the shooting, details unfolded surrounding Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old Newtown shooter, his “strange” behavior and “obsession” with violent video games kept surfacing. Lanza lived at his mother's colonial-style mansion, where he had two of the house's four bedrooms – one for himself and the other for the computer where he played violent video games,

[Chrisksaint]

Re: Violent Video Games

Makes no sense

I stomped turtles, killed many monsters in Final Fantasy games, Sith warriors in KOTOR, etc. as a kid and have recently got into Halo/COD in the past few years. So have many others in the world today, a few outliers of crazy people don't signify a connection.

I too would like to have my own room where I can keep all my sports memorabilia, TV, video games, etc. When did that become a bad thing?

[daflyboys]

Re: Violent Video Games

This has been talked about since Zelda's been firing 8-bit arrows at 2D villians. This looks like MSN creating news so they can put out some additional filler lists, commentary, etc.

I don't believe there has yet been any legitimate clinical study corroborating what people only surmise or maybe want to believe.

There are millions of teens (and unfortunately children) playing exceedingly violent video games, but it is also in the manner of what context. Overall, my guess would be that of the millions who do so, an insignificant number are being affected directly in regards to their attitudes/morality about violence. Of course, this seeps into the parenting dynamics realm as well. In my own situation, it was Mortal Kombat with my son at an earlier age. He was allowed to keep the filters on the game off with the understanding that the minute I discovered he was becoming aggressive around others for unprovoked reasons, he would be declined playing this type of game any further.

[Phobia]

Re: Violent Video Games

Makes no sense

I stomped turtles, killed many monsters in Final Fantasy games, Sith warriors in KOTOR, etc. as a kid and have recently got into Halo/COD in the past few years. So have many others in the world today, a few outliers of crazy people don't signify a connection.

I too would like to have my own room where I can keep all my sports memorabilia, TV, video games, etc. When did that become a bad thing?

I think my biggest refute that video games are not the problem.

For instance, I'm a hunter. Duck, deer, rabbit, squirrle, etc etc. It is far more graphic and personal the damage dealt in a real live hunting situation.

Now my point of bringing this up is that there are 100,000s of hunters that have never touched a video game system and don't go around shooting people. Which is no more different than the 1,000,000s of kids that play violent video games and don't show a ounce of violence in the real world.

This sick narrow mindedness of always having to peg something as the culprit drives me insane.

So because a women uses bath water to bath is she no more likely to drown her children. What about that crazy women that put her child in the microwave, are we all now more likely to put our kids in the microwave because we use one.

I mean these situations are clearly slightly different, but it is still mind numbing to me that people are literally ignorant enough to believe this. Next thing you know video games bans will happen, then violent film bans, then books and on and on. It is a cycle that truly can come back to hurt every single last one of us.

[wrigleyville33]

Re: Violent Video Games

Honestly I tie violent video games and violent movies hand and hand. If you blame video games you also have to blame violent movies dating back to the 1950s and/or beyond.

[SPTO]

Re: Violent Video Games

There HAVE been studies that show violent video games do push people who are pre disposed to violent behavior to act out on it but again, that's not the MAJORITY of people and so because of the outliers people go nuts and blame the entire industry.

I think that video games aren't the problem per se but they can be PART of the problem. I agree with you guys as most of us here have played violent games and are well adjusted and i'm going to wager that most of us grew up in fairly stable homes, got into these games with a full understanding of what they're getting into and the parents pretty much knew what they were allowing. Unfortunately there are people out there that don't have that structure and support and it can lead to some pretty disturbing behavior.

Basically I think it's more of a parenting problem than a video game problem.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Violent Video Games

Video games is like a piece of sand in the hourglass of problems with violence in this country.

[Blzer]

Re: Violent Video Games

If anything, video games are people's "out" to remedy not doing the real life thing. I think removing video games would be anything but the solution.

[daflyboys]

Re: Violent Video Games

There HAVE been studies that show violent video games do push people who are pre disposed to violent behavior to act out on it but again, that's not the MAJORITY of people and so because of the outliers people go nuts and blame the entire industry.

I think that video games aren't the problem per se but they can be PART of the problem. I agree with you guys as most of us here have played violent games and are well adjusted and i'm going to wager that most of us grew up in fairly stable homes, got into these games with a full understanding of what they're getting into and the parents pretty much knew what they were allowing. Unfortunately there are people out there that don't have that structure and support and it can lead to some pretty disturbing behavior.

Basically I think it's more of a parenting problem than a video game problem.

Well, there's studies and then there's legitimate, clinical studies. Still has to be difficult to tease out because there are so many factors. But, I couldn't agree more about the parenting point.

[mb625]

Re: Violent Video Games

I don't think there's any correlation at all between violence in video games and actual violence. I know plenty of people who play CoD, Halo, etc. who don't have those tendencies at all in real life and I think it's unfair to judge an entire section of people solely on the actions of a few.

[OSUFan_88]

Re: Violent Video Games

The problem isn't the violent video games necessarily. It's when a person gets addicted, loses all self awareness and becomes a social hermit.

If entertaining with violence was all it took, then violent books would have been banned a long time ago.

[gerg1234]

Re: Violent Video Games

Dude was crazy. All of these shooters have been mentally unstable. THAT'S THE DANG PROBLEM! We need to break down the social stigma of mental health and work on fixing it.

[Lieutenant Dan]

Re: Violent Video Games

The problem isn't the violent video games necessarily. It's when a person gets addicted, loses all self awareness and becomes a social hermit.

If entertaining with violence was all it took, then violent books would have been banned a long time ago.

Nice point, but I also agree with SPTO about parenting.

In this age we live in, parents have to be in touch with what their kids are watching on tv/movies/webz, listening to, or playing (videogame wise)...and their internet activity. How much each parent allows is up to them and what they feel their kid can understand. If your kid is prone to acting out, then GTA is probably not a good plan.

Also, parents need to know that a kid can differentiate what's real and what's a game/movie/show. I've had discussions with my son about film and tv and gaming many times to make sure he can distinguish real from fantasy, and he's real good about that.

He's 17 going on 18 now and is very mature for his age. But I brought him along easy with gaming and movies because he's a sensitive soul like I am. He didn't start getting into more mature gaming and film until 8th/9th grade. Prior to that, he wasn't very interested in harder stuff and I didn't foist it on him.

It's a helluva lot to keep up with these days as compared to the 70's and early 80's when I was coming up. Back then, entertainment consisted of talking on the telephone (which was in the kitchen, lol), watching 11 channels of tv w/no pay channels, listening to the radio, listening to records, writing letters, building model kits, ride a bike, read books, launching water rockets or Estes model rockets, skateboarding, shooting BB guns, playing with friends, going to the movies, and maybe, after 1980, some Atari 2600 after homework is done.

We did not have cellphones/smartphones, internet, computers, ipads, cds, DirecTv, dvds, ipods...you get the idea.

Point is, my parents didn't have much to monitor! TV was already very self-censored and limited, FM radio was harmless, gaming in the early 80's was harmless, no computers so no chats with predators/no facebook slagging/no porn.

Man I tell ya...it wasn't utopian, but it was a helluva lot less drama to be a kid back before all these 'conveniences'.

[JODYE]

Re: Violent Video Games

Violent video games are only as damaging as the parents of the child allow them to be.

Parents that let their kids raise themselves on TV and the internet is the bigger problem at hand here.

With no parents guiding them, establishing the moral compass by which a child should live, what more can we expect from those same children as adults, when they've been living their whole life with an altered sense of reality?

Which is why I'm old school. I'll scold my kid in public, I'll spank his *** when he does something wrong, and I'll damn sure make sure he knows that entertainment is not reality, which it seems like a lot of children now have no grasp of.

I couldn't believe I saw a trending topic a few weeks ago, #cutforbieber. Basically kids saying they were going to cut themselves everyday until Bieber stopped smoking weed. I was speechless. I had never seen something so ludicrous, but that small sample helps paint the larger picture of the problem with our society today.

[8]

Re: Violent Video Games

Violent video games are only as damaging as the parents of the child allow them to be.

Parents that let their kids raise themselves on TV and the internet is the bigger problem at hand here.

With no parents guiding them, establishing the moral compass by which a child should live, what more can we expect from those same children as adults, when they've been living their whole life with an altered sense of reality?

Which is why I'm old school. I'll scold my kid in public, I'll spank his *** when he does something wrong, and I'll damn sure make sure he knows that entertainment is not reality, which it seems like a lot of children now have no grasp of.

I couldn't believe I saw a trending topic a few weeks ago, #cutforbieber. Basically kids saying they were going to cut themselves everyday until Bieber stopped smoking weed. I was speechless. I had never seen something so ludicrous, but that small sample helps paint the larger picture of the problem with our society today.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

Parents need to be parents, if they are paying attention they should be able to see abnormal behavior such as aggression and violence. Some parents don't want to do their job and raise their children. That is more dangerous than any video game or movie ever created.