It's not that "he played a video game and went nuts". It's that he has played violent video games and watched violent movies for hours a day since he was a child, he was depressed and angry, and at some point, when confronted with an overwhelming trigger event that his rational mind couldn't handle, his long-term overexposure to violent images inhibited his problem solving solving skills (i.e. "when confronted with a problem, fight it out"), and his violence-saturated limbic brain overode his rational mind and he reacted with violence - AKA, he "just went off".
I kind of always figured it was just common sense that if you do depressing, angry, and violent things long enough, you'll probably end up as a depredssed, angry, and violent person. BTW, it has been demonstrated that positive behaviors induce physiological changes to the brain - is it too much to assume that negative behaviors can too? (Hint: that's been demonstrated as well). If you won't recognize that, then I don't really know what to say, sir...
In the end, it doesn't really matter if your kid "can handle it" or not. If the kid down the street can't, your kid's just as dead when his neighbor shoots him or beats him to death because he's got "issues" and has become conditioned to find reward/pleasure in, and inured to, violence, fostered by a society that thinks it's perfectly fine to let its kids just sit around and make "play" out of being bad-assed murderers, as well as pimps and car thieves.
And yes, there's a marked psychological difference between the old days of playing "Cops and Robbers" or "Cowboys and Indians". Those games involved actual physical activity and were far less limbic-impactive. They were not focused on raking up extra points for the most gruesome killing technique or body counts.
What's the causation? Who knows? Maybe some portion of that "host of other problems" is rooted in screen/video violence. I'm not sure. But in a society increasingly full of people with "other problems and no boundaries", it's probably at least worth a look. Fewer people die of violent crime today - not because of fewer violent crimes - but because of better trauma care, at least in part gleaned from having more medical personnel with greater experience in treating the increasingly grisly effects of a violent society.
Clearly, not everyone who plays violent video games will "nut up" and gun down everyone in sight, just as not everyone who sees a Chevy commercial will run down to the dealer and buy a new Chevrolet.
But, just as sooner or later, the cumulative effect of seeing thousands of "Like a Rock" commercials might influence some people to buy Chevy trucks (it must, or "Madison Avenue" wouldn't exist), is it that difficult to concede that repetitively witnessing tens of thousands of extremely graphic, simulated, ritualized murders might lower one's resistance to committing violence themselves? Especially when one starts visualizing those murders as a child? Especially if one is "having fun" while doing it?
My point is that there are demonstrable links between violent imagery, whether it's in video games or on screen, and violence in society. To say otherwise is to either willfully or ignorantly disregard overwhelming evidence to support that assertion.
Perhaps one would be better served by actually studying and applying some of that research, instead of merely stating an anecdotal opinion. The information is there, and has been for a long time. Again, please visit http://www.killology.com and read at least some of the materials Dave Grossman (I suggest you start with "Stop Teaching our Kids to Kill") and many other extremely well-regarded experts have published on this topic. You may change your mind.
It’s not specious at all, it’s the simple reality. When a very small percentage of the population has a completely different psychological reaction to a certain stimuli than the rest then there is clearly something different about them. That difference would generally be labeled as a problem, ie they’d be buggy long before they got the stimuli.
Nope, it’s not that he played and watched, it’s that he was already nuts and finally his insanity fully manifested. I referenced earlier in the thread a guy that killed two people after watching Psycho, people liked to blame the movie for that but they ignore the person he killed and the women he raped BEFORE seeing Psycho. He was already nuts, he just opened it wider after the movie. Nobody ever “just went off”, all of them already had all of the parts to going off in place for decades before ever playing a video game or seeing a movie.
The current tests are showing that you’re idea of “common sense” is exactly backwards. That most people burn through their negative emotions by experiencing the media. Depressed people listen to depressing music and expunge some of their depression. Angry people play violent video games and exhaust their aggression. The normal mind burns through it, abnormal minds need to get normal.
Sorry but that’s the typical sad excuse for tyranny. Just because kid X isn’t well adjusted doesn’t mean society should have to change to accommodate him. Kid X needs to adjust, the rest of society, which has shown the ability to handle those stimuli, shouldn’t be dragged down because of kid X. When you drop to the lowest common denominator you glue society to the bottom.
We know what the cause is: some people are nuts. Clearly a truly insignificant percentage of the population play violent video games and perform uncontrolled violent deeds. Millions upon millions have played the games and not even dozens have had problems.
Again the advertising angle is 100% false comparison. Ads are about product awareness and bandwagoning. We already know about violence and there is no bandwagon for it.
Sorry but your “point” is false. There is absolutely no demonstrated link between violent video games and violent behavior. Not once, ever. Every study has, at best, been inconclusive, then there’s the chart posted up thread showing the drastic drop in national violent crime rate in the age of violent video games. I HAVE actually spent time studying and applying the research, that’s why I know your “point” is quite simply a lie.