Posted on 12/18/2012 10:26:10 AM PST by drewh
The Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre has inspired fresh talk about the affect that violent video games like "Call of Duty" and "Grand Theft Auto" are having on children and young men like Adam Lanza, who was known by his friends to be a gamer.
Summary
The tragedy in CT has re-igniting the debate over the effect games like "Grand Theft Auto" are having on children.
Games are getting increasingly more violent, experts agree -- 8 of the 10 most popular are violent.
Violent games clearly increase aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological responses, aggressive behavior and more, experts say.
“It’s impossible to say what caused any given person to commit a horrific act like this,” said Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University and one of the country’s leading experts on video game violence. “But we can say whether violent video games increase aggression … and they do.”
Bushman’s latest study, published two weeks ago in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. While gamers often scoff at such studies, the evidence is overwhelming, Bushman said.
“It’s like smokers saying tobacco isn’t harmful. The scientific evidence is clear,” he told FoxNews.com. “A single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Full disclosure: My daughter plays a FPS game, but it has been modified so that the only "weapon" is a snow ball, the health meter is a thermometer, and the health package is a cup of coco.
This is where the conversation should’ve been in the first place.
Video games are no more a problem for schizophrenics than the talking mailboxes that tell them to do crazy stuff.
Might as well ban delusions.
Crazies gonna crazy. It’s that simple.
“It’s impossible to say what caused any given person to commit a horrific act like this,”
Last time I checked, the gun jumped into his hand, dragged him to a school, and started firing all on its own.
Thousands - tens to hundreds of thousands - are playing first-person shooter video games right now.
I challenge anyone to find a large enough percentage of them who are also committing mass murder to justify any logical hypothesis of correlation between video game violence and psychotic behavior.
In 1984, I was asked to analyze a "Character" curriculum. I got a team together and we went over it with a fine tooth comb. Our findings were rather interesting. The program was specially designed to disengage the student from any of the moorings that help a child to grow into an adult, most notably the parents, but also any faith in God. At one point, one member of my team said that he actually felt as though he was staring into the pit of hell as he read through the fifth grade lesson where the teacher was instructed to help the children come to terms with the Andes plane crash and the resulting cannibalism, with questions that kneaded emotions out of the children. Questions like: how would you feel if you and your friends were in a plane crash like that? Would you be able to eat your friends?
I took that program to an old parish priest, the kind of man whose common sense made him someone I just had to talk to. I showed him the very worst pages of the program. He read through it and put his hand on his forehead, sighed deeply and said: "You know you could have five kids go through this and four of them might end up with a few quirks, but that fifth one?" He then just shook his head.
My point is this - there have been programs just like the one I studied in place all over this country since the 80s. It was only a matter of time when those "fifth children" begin to commit acts of mass murder. Add anti-depressants and you have a recipe for disaster.
What I noticed in 1984 was that these programs were carefully constructed so that no one, not the teacher, the student, nor the parent would have any idea that anything was happening to the student. We were successful at getting the program we studied thrown out. However, we had no way of convincing others as to the danger these kind of "character" programs posed.
This type of education is the root of the problem. And it infests every public school system. And, is endorsed by the CDC and the NEA. But, it is so well hidden no one would know where to begin to look for it.
The reason for it all? They have a vested interest in turning your children into compliant little Marxists. So what if a few kids go off the deep end and shoot to kill other students?
Sen. Lieberman: Adam Lanza had ‘hypnotic’ involvement with violent video games http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-lieberman-adam-lanzas-hypnotic-involvement-with-violent-video-games-may-have-led-him-to-kill/article/2516269#.UNC1QazSnmV
I blame it on 3 things in general.
Schools themselves
Responsibility free parenting
Some people are just plain broken.
And the fags on every TV channel...
Adam was psychotic.
He could have focused on a telephone pole and still killed those children.
In fact, just like the confessions of the Green River Killer, the video game (like the killer’s own wife) may have prevented it from happening earlier because it filled the void that he had inside himself and satiated his need to kill.
For all that we know the whole episode started because his mother made him stop playing and he needed that void filled that he was born with.
People are born crazy. Some crazier than others.
Video games don’t kill.
I am starting to wonder if video games like, possibly if there is a Far Cry 4, should have some kind of label of notoriety because of all of this. There is no such thing as bad publicity, right?. I also don’t know how many people who complain about these things have even played one of these “violent” video games that they talk about. In fact, if “violent” video games teach you anything it is to be vigilant about self-defense and to prepare against those who wish to kill you.
But I’ve been only playing Breath of Fire II lately, a 16 bit RPG, so what do I know?
Anyone know if any video game publisher/s have made a statement about these kinds of accusations?
The greatest harm to the public in both is when the simulation isn't enough anymore and they move to act it out. Hence the epidemic of grade school kids engaging in shocking sexual acts, 'sexting' and other problems that have engulfed our youth.
Through these media, our kids are taught and stimualted to kill. They seek to rack up the highest scores and receive enough simulator training to effectively point and shoot with devastating results. Years ago I attended a seminar from LTC Dave Grossman (On Killing). I was sceptical of many of his claims, and certainly the media aren't the only factor involved, but over the years and after much study and reflection on the problem, the link is undeniable. These attacks become increasingly costly and the death tolls higher and higher in direct proportion to the increasing sophistication and realism of violent visual media.
Sorry, Mr. Tarantino, but you and your ilk have MUCH blood on your hands, and it isn't colored corn syrup.<
You are not going to find a correlation.
We are speaking about people who are on the margin of sanity. The question is “ are there people it is possible to push over the edge?”
If so, their numbers would be low. They would not show up in a study. But that does not mean they do not exist
The Islamic nations seem able to push people to mass crimes in which they kill themselves in the name of jihad. Many of those human weapons are mentally unstable And are manipulated
So, it is possible.
It is 1968 all over again!
Shooter games are one thing, but the games kids are playing now are increasingly vile and violent. Same with movies. The entertainment industry keeps pushing the envelope on what they show so that all forms of sadism, torture, graphic gore, and sexual perversion along with an unhealthy dose of callousness towards the suffering of others has now become the norm.
Yes, I’m an old fogey, but the thought of the movie Saw III being released at Christmas time turns my stomach. I call all this “violence porn”, and like any porn, it is constantly exploring new depths of degradation and anti-social behavior. Our society is sick.
This shooting is being used to control minds. And I see from many different venues that it is working.
Society is the same now as it has always been since time began. When you absorb history you will find all of the things that we have now: pornography, violence, psychosis, etc. Hard core porn is not some invention of the 1990’s.
Heck, snuff movies were being made back in the 1930’s. The Romans had public gatherings to watch mutilations and killings. Much worse than Saw (though I also hate those films). The Mayans were not peaches themselves.
We now have “live” TV and a very sophisticated media. They work very hard to make sure that we think that things are worse now than they have ever been. And that Media hates freedom and guns...
I guess what I’m saying is that I refuse to surrender any of my God given freedoms to the Socialists simply because <1% of the population is a known danger.
Oh, forgot to write:
The games are getting increasingly realistic (your view is violent) because about half of the players are over 25 now. “Kids” aren’t the money players anymore.
Many of the games that you are thinking of are already reserved for 18 and up and you pretty much need an adult to get them.
Just a thought I had...
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