Mario wants you all to know that he is making history on Gamer-Aid. Not only is he sharing an article with Sonic, but having two pictures in one blog has never happened before on Gamer-Aid. He also wants you to keep an open mind about video games. Mario has spoken (or rather, I have spoken for him).First of all. I want to give credit to the information in this post to a Mr. Tom Hanson who is the Editor of OpenEducation.net.
For those of you that don't know, Hanson didn't have the most open mind about video games and violence when it came to children's behaviors and reactions. That was until he did an interview with Dr. Cheryl Olsen and Lawrence Kutner, the authors of Grand Theft Childhood. I have read the entire interview, including the prologue, if you will, leading up to the interview. It is fantastic. And it can be a positive eye opener to anyone who isn't sure what side of the fence they sit on when it comes to children and the influence they may receive by playing video games. Here are a couple of key points taken directly from the interview and the blog post by Hanson that I throughly enjoyed reading.
"Q: Lastly, why do you think so many adults (politicians included) are convinced that these games have to be detrimental to the mental health of teens? Is it an aversion or fear of the specific content? Is it a lack of understanding as to why kids like the games? Is it just a simplistic response to try to explain away other societal issues? A: All of those play a role. It’s upsetting to see a group of boys laughing as they watch one game character literally rip the guts out of another. But when you know more about the context, motivations and other factors involved, you may see this differently. Also, for politicians it’s an issue that they can campaign easily on, even if the scientific data don’t support their claims."
The reason I like this answer so much is the last line. Politicians need something easy to target. And video games are an easy topic. But the ironic part is that there are no scientific data to support their claims. I, as a video game enthusiast, knew this, but for someone else with more credibility in that area to say something like this really can be an eye opener. Here's another portion of the post.
"According to Kutner and Olson, the fact is that 'Video game popularity and real-world youth violence have been moving in opposite directions. Violent juvenile crime in the United States reached a peak in 1993 and has been declining ever since. School violence has also gone down. Between1994 and 2001, arrests for murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assaults fell 44 percent, resulting in the lowest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes since 1983.'"
This is also interesting to me because some people (*COUGH* Jack Thompson) would have you believe that violence among juveniles is increasing because of video games. When in fact, it's peak was in 1993 and it has been the lowest since 1983. 1983?! I don't even think blood like pixels were invented back then. Wonder how Thompson would explain that?
Here are a couple of pulls from the post that I found most interesting regarding school shootings such as the tragedy that happened at VT a year ago.
"Yet another purported myth involves the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech that sought to link Seung-Hui Cho’s violent behavior to video game play. Note Kutner and Olson, “Media darling and pop psychologist Phil McGraw, appearing on CNN’s Larry King Live, stated, Common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society….The mass murders [sic] of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive violence overdose.” According to Kutner and Olson, “The official report of the Virginia Tech Review Panel specifically dismissed the purported links between Cho’s use of video games and his extremely violent behavior. In the chapter on Cho’s mental health history, video games are mentioned on only three pages. When he was nine years old, he was enrolled in a Tae Kwon Do program for awhile, watched TV, and played video games like Sonic the Hedgehog.”
"According to Kutner and Olson, 'The U. S. Secret Service intensely studied each of the 37 non-gang and non-drug-related school shootings and stabbings that were considered ‘targeted attacks’ that took place nationally from 1974 through 2000. (Note how few premeditated school shootings there actually were during that 27-year time period, compared with the public perception of those shootings as relatively common events!). The incidents studied included the most notorious school shootings, such as Columbine, Santee and Paducah, in which the young perpetrators had been linked in the press to violent video games. The Secret Service found that that there was no accurate profile. Only 1 in 8 school shooters showed any interest in violent video games; only 1 in 4 liked violent movies.'"
What really strikes me about those two statements is the fact that Cho used to
play Sonic the Hedgehog. Wow. And people were really arguing that video games were to blame for the VT shootings. I'll tell you who is to blame, the idiot who pulled the trigger, Cho. Sonic the Hedgehog just jumps on people. Now if we have a school shooting where someone actually doesn't use guns but dresses up in a blue outfit with some red shoes and jumps on people and tries to curl into a ball and knock into them like bowling pins, THEN you call me, ok?Lastly, the authors of the book touch on video game addiction. They bring up a point that I have been trying to make for years. When I read it, I was excited. Here it is.
Kutner and Olsen say “[A] child plays basketball or plays the piano for four hours per day, we may describe him or her as a dedicated athlete or musician. A teenager who knows all the game statistics and trivia about a local professional football team, and who spends a lot of money buying jerseys and other memorabilia, is considered a true fan. It’s a socially acceptable hobby; in fact, it’s encouraged. But if that child takes the same approach to playing video games, spending hours each day at the computer and reveling in the details and strategies of play, we may worry about an addiction.”
Thank you Kutner and Olsen. Thank you. That has been one of my main arguments when it comes to video game addiction. And I had just mentioned that in a post yesterday. Look, I'm not advocating your child sitting in front of the TV all day trying to rescue the mushroom princess, but it is looked down upon even more if they aren't doing something "constructive" like being an athlete, musician, or book worm. The problem is people do not believe that video games have any educational or societal value other than wasting one's life away. There's not much I can do about that at this moment other than say they are wrong and that they should just play a JRPG like Lost Odyssey or a Final Fantasy to see how wrong they are.
I want to thank Tom Hanson again for sending me the link to his site, OpenEducation.net and I encourage all of you to read all (1) three (2) of his posts (3) that include his interview with Kutner and Olsen.
Enjoy.
Jeremy aka Adridius
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