After dancing around the question of whether tattoos are okay for Christians, marriage and family therapist Dr. Linda Mintle (pictured) turned her attention to the subject of violent videogames.
On the CBN website, a “preteen” stated that “My mom and dad don’t want me to play violent video games,” and asked the doctor “What’s the big deal?”
Mintle, who is also Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School, before responding with a laundry list of maladies she attributed to playing violent games, said that the “big deal” is that playing such games can lead to aggression and “increase delinquency.”
Among her claims:
- … you may even see the world as hostile after playing these games.
- Violent video games can teach you violent ways to think.
- Violent video games allow you to practice being violent.
- For heavier consumers of violent media (four or more hours a day), the impact is less school effort, poorer reading skills, less time playing with friends, fewer hobbies/activities, and overweight.
- The games can make you less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.
- The games can also make you more fearful of the world and see it as a scary place.
- If you practice violence in games, you can access this information for real-life situations.
In spite of that list, Dr. Mintle then offered, “... we don’t know how much those games affect you in terms of violence and shooting people.”
Comments
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
"For heavier consumers of violent media (four or more hours a day), the impact is less school effort, poorer reading skills, less time playing with friends, fewer hobbies/activities, and overweight."
i must be an exception to those, especially this one...
my school effort was dimineshed (when i was in school anywho) by teachers preaching individuality then freaking at the first sign of it and assigned detention and/or bad grades. also got sent to alternative schools for being an individual... can't argue though, the new class had a couch to snooze on when work was finished :)
i LOVE to read, and get complained to about having to many books as it is, plugging away at the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lewis Carol ATM.
friends issues on my end are tied to a slight anti social disorder, but never was an issue, i just don't care for human interaction. Prefer to wrestle the Dog (big'ol Malamute :) well.. when she was around, someone stole my wolf! grrr will get a new one, but buying a house atm, so no cash nore time) or climb a tree and take a nap up there.
hobbies.. fewer?.... heh, lessee.. i build model kits, play around with pepakura, play trumpet, guitar (and suck), as well as piano/keyboard, and i enjoy nature walking (living in the country has made me a little dull it seems though since my GF (cityite) is enthralled by a little woodly stroll where its daily routing for me :p ). Also collect a LOT of differant things, and customize many.
used to work on my pilots license too, but my blood pressure is a bit high now :( (hereditary condition FYI, not related to weight :p 10 pounds may be overweight, but tbh i wanna know who set these damned standards anyways. they tell my GF she's 10 over too, but if she were to lose any weight she'd be a damned skeleton!)
yeh, she's so spot on.. and this is with a hard violent game binge each night or so.
thems words of opinion, not fact, and studies have thus far been favorable to that FACT rather than her opinions.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
I was going to come up with a rebuttal, but then I started to read the article and came across this nugget;
"They aren’t just entertainment. If you play violent video games, you can think and act more aggressively. And because you are male, you may even see the world as hostile after playing these games."
...I don't think de-construction is necessary.
Not that it matters, I fully support parents taking responsibility for what their children play.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
I would call her out for beign sexist, but I forget that for some odd reason sexism doesn't work both ways. -_-
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
"And because you are male"
Wow.
It's funny because I saw a study from the US Government stating that 70% of domestic violence cases are initiated by women, the vast majority of whom don't play video games, let alone violent ones.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
"67% of American households play computer or video games. [...] 40% of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (20%)." --ESA
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
yes but the games women play are usually the "casual" style games IIRC. Namely facebook stuff or puzzle games, not violent ones, least not usually anything worse than an MMO.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
While I don't deny that many women tend to play 'casual' games, let's not suggest that they don't play violent games. I have two female cousins who play COD on Xbox 360.
The way I see it, women want to play the same action/adventure games as men, they just don't want to play games where female characters are treated gratuitously or the heroine is over-sexualised.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
SHHHH!!! your not supposed to know that!
men are the violent ones, piracy is sky high, and children are increasingly violent towards one another!! lets also not forget that WW2 was a world wide government conspiracy to make the jews richer or some bullox.... ummm yeh.
heh, its funny how despite the publicly available stats as such are the most ignored when some "expert" speaks isn't it?
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Wow...just wow
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Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
How can I practice violence upon someone with my thumbs? Add onto that no amount of "game training" is going to allow me to overcome a screwed up hip.
-Ultimately what will do in mankind is a person's fear of their own freedom-
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
I suppose on the plus side, it's good to see parents enforcing their rules, regardless of peoples' opinions on whether those rules are 'right' or not. Just goes to show they take their responsibilities seriously.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
For a fact, CBN(Christian Broadcasting Network) was founded by Pat Robertson and broadcasts his show the 700 Club.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Honestly, a consumer of any sort of media for more than 4 hours a day is at risk of 'less school effort, poorer reading skills, less time playing with friends, fewer hobbies/activities, and overweight. ' It doesn't have to be violent.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
I don't know about poorer reading skills, as many games require a good amount of reading.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
they used too, more and more these days though its being phased out for simpler controls and voice overs so its more "accessible"
i mean, the more popular games are often the least accessible ones no less.
but more cash is to be made with simple point and shoot titles, that lack any sort of real depth or reason besides cash making ala Halo or CoD. simplify simplify simplify, even ubi's doing it to once otherwise spectacular titles (the Tom Clancy games namely), just to make some fast cash on a fast to sell and die product.
the easier the game mechanics, the less reading, the less reading the quicker it sells to the masses.
otherwise the DoA games do have more than 2 characters with a lot of spectacular and hard to pull of combos that won't work with button mashing. But since no one looks past Kasumi.. its hard to prove that :p (fyi though the point stands, i'm not upping DoA.. so lets not go on some "why it sucks" tirade as i've seen people do before...)
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
"the easier the game mechanics, the less reading, the less reading the quicker it sells to the masses."
I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy games still sell pretty well.
Dragon Age didn't do too badly either.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Sad times we live in.
No wonder older games keep gettign remade for newer devices.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
I was about to say the same thing, but then I saw that you already had. I wish I knew how it is that people can get away with saying such moronic things, in public and broadcast to the whole world, and not get called out on it except for places like here, where we're pretty much preaching to the choir.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Those are all great replies on her part but unless she can back those items up with citations to real studies proving her point then they are nothing more than her unfounded opinion.
Just like its my unfounded opinion that such idiots should be chemically castrated in order to decrease the chance of them spreading their genes and increasing the level of idiocy in America ... I have no citation proving that removing her from the gene pool would have a positive effect on the intelligence level of America but my gut is telling me it would.
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
" Those are all great replies on her part but unless she can back those items up with citations to real studies proving her point then they are nothing more than her unfounded opinion."
You're expecting scientific vetting from people who believe the Earth is 6000 years old?
Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Every point she mentions deserves at least 200 facepalms or 20 headdesk to cope with her stupidity.
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Re: Doc on Violent Games: They Allow the Player to Practice ...
Those are some really nice OPINIONS she has there.
There is no basis in FACT for her opinions, but at least we know for certain that she keeps her SOAPBOX on hand whenever she needs to stand on it and speak her opinions.