Interesting research on how violent games affect child development

Found this article talking about research done in Japan to see how violent games affected about 500 5th graders, and it's actually pretty interesting. According to the study, games with identifyable heroes/heroines that beat down bad guys are more likely to develope more aggressive attitudes in young'uns, but the interesting thing is that in games where players beat down things more indiscriminantly, or that contain other types of violence, the kids aggressive attitudes actually decrease over time from playing those games. Whatever the case, the article is an interesting read, well worth checking out.

So games with violence should feature characters no one can identify with or care about killing at random?

Loaded 3: Starring Yoshi

Nevada played violent video games. Now we don't get presents for christmas anymore. :(

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/a...chmentid=13489

Violent video games do seem to have a strong affect on some youngsters, my room-mates little brother used to act very violent the more violent games he played so he wasn't allowed to play them anymore and he became a lot more stable in terms of his temper. I'm not saying that violent games are bad and are corrupting people but there's a reason why they have age based rating systems.

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Originally Posted by Opaque

Nevada played violent video games. Now we don't get presents for christmas anymore. :(

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Goddammit, Japanese people are fucked up.

Nevada = teh winnar.

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Originally Posted by diffusionx

Goddammit, Japanese people are fucked up.

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Well, they did have an A-bomb fall on them.

That explains the love of tentacle porn.

There are so many factors that go into how a child/person behaves. I'm not saying violent video games have no affect, but I have two young cousins that play alot of "violent" video games that are actually very tame. I think the affect is determined by other factors. Interpreting aggressive behavior as a result of playing violent video games seems to me to be too simplistic. That's just my opinion.

SC

I looked up some Medical Journal Databases for some similar videogame articles, there's a whole bunch of articles on violence, but I found so much other cool stuff. In summary:

* videogames make you fat
* videogames make can give you DVT
* videogames can make your bones brittle
* Everquest players are deeply socially retarded
* videogames help children develop far stronger problem solving and lateral thinking skills.
* videogames reconfigure your visio-spatial systems to be far superior than non-gamers.
* "Playstation Thumb" in the Lancet no less, WTF?

If anyone wants any journal articles just ask.