Can't agree with this article. There has got to be a limit somewhere. We can't go around promoting violence and hate and not expect some really bad repercussions, especially on our youth, and especially on those living on the fringes who have no one to guide them and help them realize that these words are not to be taken literally. Study…
Can't agree with this article. There has got to be a limit somewhere. We can't go around promoting violence and hate and not expect some really bad repercussions, especially on our youth, and especially on those living on the fringes who have no one to guide them and help them realize that these words are not to be taken literally. Study and after study and after study shows that violent movies, video games, etc literally DO promote violence. Unfettered words of hatred and violence DO have consequences. Those promoting it should take responsibility for the hate they spew out.
Children become desensitized to violence and mimic what they see and hear.
Hate and graphic violence is not art. Let's call a spade a spade.
"Study and after study and after study shows that violent movies, video games, etc literally DO promote violence"
this is factually incorrect. In fact the studies show the exact opposite. Hundreds of millions of people play games like Grand Theft Auto, or Modern Warfare and don't go on shooting spree's.
People that watch the Matrix don't turn into kung fu killing machines. And while Rap is actually the most popular music genre in America we had three decades of falling crime.
And while my wife likes watching murder shows I'm 99.9999% confident she's not going to kill me.
Smoking does not kill EVERYONE, but it does kill 30% of the people who smoke....AND it is still bad for your overall health and well-being... and second-hand smoke is also bad for people subjected to other people's smoking.
It's the same idea with violent video games and shows. There are definitely people, youth especially, who are VERY negatively affected by violent video games. It even changes their brain makeup!
"Researchers in China, for example, performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies on the brains of 18 college students who spent an average of 10 hours a day online, primarily playing games like World of Warcraft. Compared with a control group who spent less than two hours a day online, gamers had less gray matter (the thinking part of the brain).
As far back as the early 1990s, scientists warned that because video games only stimulate brain regions that control vision and movement, other parts of the mind responsible for behavior, emotion, and learning could become underdeveloped.
experts agree gaming has addictive qualities. The human brain is wired to crave instant gratification, fast pace, and unpredictability. All three are satisfied in video games.
Violent video games are of concern to many experts. In a study of 45 adolescents, playing violent video games for only 30 minutes immediately lowered activity in the prefrontal regions of the brain compared to those who participated in a non-violent game. Previous research showed that just 10–20 minutes of violent gaming increased activity in the brain regions associated with arousal, anxiety, and emotional reaction, while simultaneously reducing activity in the frontal lobes associated with emotion regulation and executive control.
The dopamine release that comes from gaming is so powerful, say researchers, it can almost shut the prefrontal regions down. "
(brainandlife)
Being a masters in education myself, I can assure you that the following, and its implications of what we teach our youth is quite true: "Practicing anything repetitively physically changes the brain. With time and effort, you get better at the specific task you're practicing, whether it's shooting at the enemy in a video game or hitting a baseball. Those repetitive actions and thoughts stimulate connections between brain cells, creating neural pathways between different parts of your brain. The more you practice a certain activity, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. That's the structural basis of learning.
The very nature of action-entertainment games not only attracts young people with focus, attention, and anger issues (particularly in the case of violent games); it also tends to reinforce these negative behaviors.
The stakes may be higher for a child with anger and behavior issues who finds solace in violent video games. While experts disagree about what (if any) impact violent games have on actual violent behavior, some research shows a link between playing violent games and aggressive thoughts and behavior.
For a kid who already has an aggressive personality, that could be a problem, say experts, since video games reward those aggressive tendencies. In fact, two separate studies found that playing a violent video game for just 10–20 minutes increased aggressive thoughts compared to those who played nonviolent games."
brainandlife
NIH: National Library of Medicine:
"Violence in VGs is a matter of intense debate, both in public opinion and in the scientific context [101,102]. A vast majority of common opinions, parents and educators consider the violence of VGs as the most negatively impacting feature to emotional and relational development of youth and children. Actually, studies agree on the negative impact of violent video games on aggressive behavior. Several meta-analyses have examined violent VGs [6,7,8,103] and, although they vary greatly in terms of how many studies they include, they seem to agree with each other. The most comprehensive [8] showed that violent VGs, gradually and unconsciously, as a result of repeated exposure to justified and fun violence, would increase aggressive thoughts, affect and behavior, physiological persistent alertnes, and would desensitize players to violence and to the pain and suffering of others, supporting a perceptual and cognitive bias to attribute hostile intentions to others.
Similarly, experimental, correlational and longitudinal studies supported the causal relationship between violent VGs and aggression, in the short- and long-term, both in a laboratory and in a real-life context. A greater amount of violent VGs, or even a brief exposure, were significantly associated with more positive attitudes toward violence [104], higher trait hostility [105] and with increased aggressive behaviors [106], physical fights [107] and aggressive thoughts [108] and affect [109]. In a two-year longitudinal study, children and adolescents who played a lot of violent VGs showed over time more aggressive behaviors, including fights and delinquency [110]. Saleem, Anderson and Gentile [82] examined the effects of short-term exposure to prosocial, neutral and violent VGs in a sample of 191 children of 9–14 years old. Results indicated that while playing prosocial games increased helpful and decreased hurtful behaviour, the violent games had the opposite effect."
Yes for the most part your stats are right. Most people are not going to act out from watching violent video games or movies of perverse music lyrics.
Yet there is another statistic. I am 73 years old and I watched this major cultural change.
There were millions of guns in America from the American revolution until the 1990s with plenty of violence, but the violence was pointed. Directed at an issue or someone.
The random shootings. Killing for killings sake began to happen with the introduction of violent games, music and the more sophisticated portrayal of the visual image in movies.
As for the mass shootings, I think the increased prevalence of them is in large part driven by the media. We know that the huge media coverage of Columbine spurred numerous copy cat shootings.
I am sure the media makes some difference, but again, pediatric studies show repeatedly that kids exposed to violent video games and shows are very negatively impacted by what they see.
Nope, you are wrong that violent crimes videos do not harm kids and have not had an impact on society. My pediatrician who trained at Cornell and SUNY, and who has practiced medicine for over 30 years, said there are NUMEROUS studies, repeated by many medical schools, over many years that show the EXTREMELY negative impact of violent video games and TV shows on children's behavior.
Just because you and your wife are able to keep your heads on straight, it doesn't mean everyone can.
Not everyone who smokes is going to die of lung cancer... but 30% of people will.
Smoking does not kill 100% of the people who smoke, but we do KNOW that smoking is very bad for your health. It's the same concept with violent videos and shows.
I did not say that everyone responds badly, but it does indeed influence children's behavior in a very bad way. Shootings are up all over the country. No conscience crimes and desensitization to people in pain is common. Crime rates are thru the roof, and it's not JUST because of defund the police, but even if that exacerbates the problem, that people want to do these crimes in the first place speaks volumes.
Chicago just had a gang who attacked a couple, killing the pregnant woman's baby, and it was committed by 10 teenagers. The two who were caught were a 17-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. What were this couple doing... going on a date and walking down the street. Per the news article the teenage thugs kept saying: We own the street. We own the street. You can’t walk around.’ I was wearing like a nice dress and heels. Like I was out on the date with my husband, and they dragged my dress on the ground, and they said, like, ‘we own the street. You can’t just walk around prancing in your little dress.’ And they were saying things that just didn’t make any sense to me because they don’t know me personally.”
Seconds after the mob set upon the husband, a teenage girl began dragging the wife by her hair and pepper sprayed her in the face while another began beating her and kicking her in the stomach. The attack was so brutal, it left the woman with bald spots from where chunks of her hair were torn from her scalp."
Do you really want people to write lyrics like: "Yea yea yea man, take a gun and shoot all the kids at school, because hey man, that's what I likes to do! Yea yea yea..." You are going to try to tell me that that is art and that won't have a negative impact on some kids somewhere... and not just one or two kids! This is fed into the minds of millions of kids. It's time for us to start acting more responsibly. Our words DO make a difference.
If you don't believe that, then maybe none of your words above make a difference either and what's the point of your responding to my comments?!
I'm sure a song like "K*ll Mathew cuz that would be great" would kinda piss you off... and rightly so. What we say matters.
Not sure what slice of time you are looking at, or specifically what kinds of crimes you are talking about, but overall violent crime rates have been thru the roof for quite a while now. FBI data shows that.
Filling our kids heads with hate-filled words, and showing them graphic violence does indeed promote violence in kids. This has been documented and proven repeatedly. This is the area that we need to address and NOT ignore.
btw, guess who committed the beheadings for ISIS? Teenagers who were shown videos on how to hate. Teenagers who became totally desensitized to violence and hate.
Look at the Palestinian protestors... mainly young college aged kids who were lead by hate instigators with their propaganda and videos.... Students who only the summer before would have denied ever wanting to hurt ANYONE or threaten a fellow student, but there they were just a few short months later trying to literally get at Jewish students JUST for being jewish... Fellow classmates! Fellow students at their universities. Unbelievable. Student Palestinian protesters who fully supported Hamas!
Soooo much influences our kids. Over and over again, many of these protesters didn't even have a CLUE what "From the River to the Sea" even meant, but they were willing to resort to violence to defend the slogan. Columbia most recently comes to mind...
YES, what we say DOES matter!!!! It's what journalism is after all, isn't it? If you insist that this spewing of hate and violence doesn't make a difference then you might as well cancel journalism too.
Can't agree with this article. There has got to be a limit somewhere. We can't go around promoting violence and hate and not expect some really bad repercussions, especially on our youth, and especially on those living on the fringes who have no one to guide them and help them realize that these words are not to be taken literally. Study and after study and after study shows that violent movies, video games, etc literally DO promote violence. Unfettered words of hatred and violence DO have consequences. Those promoting it should take responsibility for the hate they spew out.
Children become desensitized to violence and mimic what they see and hear.
Hate and graphic violence is not art. Let's call a spade a spade.
"Study and after study and after study shows that violent movies, video games, etc literally DO promote violence"
this is factually incorrect. In fact the studies show the exact opposite. Hundreds of millions of people play games like Grand Theft Auto, or Modern Warfare and don't go on shooting spree's.
People that watch the Matrix don't turn into kung fu killing machines. And while Rap is actually the most popular music genre in America we had three decades of falling crime.
And while my wife likes watching murder shows I'm 99.9999% confident she's not going to kill me.
Smoking does not kill EVERYONE, but it does kill 30% of the people who smoke....AND it is still bad for your overall health and well-being... and second-hand smoke is also bad for people subjected to other people's smoking.
It's the same idea with violent video games and shows. There are definitely people, youth especially, who are VERY negatively affected by violent video games. It even changes their brain makeup!
Research: _______________________________________________________
"Researchers in China, for example, performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies on the brains of 18 college students who spent an average of 10 hours a day online, primarily playing games like World of Warcraft. Compared with a control group who spent less than two hours a day online, gamers had less gray matter (the thinking part of the brain).
As far back as the early 1990s, scientists warned that because video games only stimulate brain regions that control vision and movement, other parts of the mind responsible for behavior, emotion, and learning could become underdeveloped.
experts agree gaming has addictive qualities. The human brain is wired to crave instant gratification, fast pace, and unpredictability. All three are satisfied in video games.
Violent video games are of concern to many experts. In a study of 45 adolescents, playing violent video games for only 30 minutes immediately lowered activity in the prefrontal regions of the brain compared to those who participated in a non-violent game. Previous research showed that just 10–20 minutes of violent gaming increased activity in the brain regions associated with arousal, anxiety, and emotional reaction, while simultaneously reducing activity in the frontal lobes associated with emotion regulation and executive control.
The dopamine release that comes from gaming is so powerful, say researchers, it can almost shut the prefrontal regions down. "
(brainandlife)
Being a masters in education myself, I can assure you that the following, and its implications of what we teach our youth is quite true: "Practicing anything repetitively physically changes the brain. With time and effort, you get better at the specific task you're practicing, whether it's shooting at the enemy in a video game or hitting a baseball. Those repetitive actions and thoughts stimulate connections between brain cells, creating neural pathways between different parts of your brain. The more you practice a certain activity, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. That's the structural basis of learning.
The very nature of action-entertainment games not only attracts young people with focus, attention, and anger issues (particularly in the case of violent games); it also tends to reinforce these negative behaviors.
The stakes may be higher for a child with anger and behavior issues who finds solace in violent video games. While experts disagree about what (if any) impact violent games have on actual violent behavior, some research shows a link between playing violent games and aggressive thoughts and behavior.
For a kid who already has an aggressive personality, that could be a problem, say experts, since video games reward those aggressive tendencies. In fact, two separate studies found that playing a violent video game for just 10–20 minutes increased aggressive thoughts compared to those who played nonviolent games."
brainandlife
NIH: National Library of Medicine:
"Violence in VGs is a matter of intense debate, both in public opinion and in the scientific context [101,102]. A vast majority of common opinions, parents and educators consider the violence of VGs as the most negatively impacting feature to emotional and relational development of youth and children. Actually, studies agree on the negative impact of violent video games on aggressive behavior. Several meta-analyses have examined violent VGs [6,7,8,103] and, although they vary greatly in terms of how many studies they include, they seem to agree with each other. The most comprehensive [8] showed that violent VGs, gradually and unconsciously, as a result of repeated exposure to justified and fun violence, would increase aggressive thoughts, affect and behavior, physiological persistent alertnes, and would desensitize players to violence and to the pain and suffering of others, supporting a perceptual and cognitive bias to attribute hostile intentions to others.
Similarly, experimental, correlational and longitudinal studies supported the causal relationship between violent VGs and aggression, in the short- and long-term, both in a laboratory and in a real-life context. A greater amount of violent VGs, or even a brief exposure, were significantly associated with more positive attitudes toward violence [104], higher trait hostility [105] and with increased aggressive behaviors [106], physical fights [107] and aggressive thoughts [108] and affect [109]. In a two-year longitudinal study, children and adolescents who played a lot of violent VGs showed over time more aggressive behaviors, including fights and delinquency [110]. Saleem, Anderson and Gentile [82] examined the effects of short-term exposure to prosocial, neutral and violent VGs in a sample of 191 children of 9–14 years old. Results indicated that while playing prosocial games increased helpful and decreased hurtful behaviour, the violent games had the opposite effect."
Yes for the most part your stats are right. Most people are not going to act out from watching violent video games or movies of perverse music lyrics.
Yet there is another statistic. I am 73 years old and I watched this major cultural change.
There were millions of guns in America from the American revolution until the 1990s with plenty of violence, but the violence was pointed. Directed at an issue or someone.
The random shootings. Killing for killings sake began to happen with the introduction of violent games, music and the more sophisticated portrayal of the visual image in movies.
I definitely agree there's been a culture change.
As for the mass shootings, I think the increased prevalence of them is in large part driven by the media. We know that the huge media coverage of Columbine spurred numerous copy cat shootings.
I am sure the media makes some difference, but again, pediatric studies show repeatedly that kids exposed to violent video games and shows are very negatively impacted by what they see.
Nope, you are wrong that violent crimes videos do not harm kids and have not had an impact on society. My pediatrician who trained at Cornell and SUNY, and who has practiced medicine for over 30 years, said there are NUMEROUS studies, repeated by many medical schools, over many years that show the EXTREMELY negative impact of violent video games and TV shows on children's behavior.
Just because you and your wife are able to keep your heads on straight, it doesn't mean everyone can.
Not everyone who smokes is going to die of lung cancer... but 30% of people will.
Smoking does not kill 100% of the people who smoke, but we do KNOW that smoking is very bad for your health. It's the same concept with violent videos and shows.
I did not say that everyone responds badly, but it does indeed influence children's behavior in a very bad way. Shootings are up all over the country. No conscience crimes and desensitization to people in pain is common. Crime rates are thru the roof, and it's not JUST because of defund the police, but even if that exacerbates the problem, that people want to do these crimes in the first place speaks volumes.
Chicago just had a gang who attacked a couple, killing the pregnant woman's baby, and it was committed by 10 teenagers. The two who were caught were a 17-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. What were this couple doing... going on a date and walking down the street. Per the news article the teenage thugs kept saying: We own the street. We own the street. You can’t walk around.’ I was wearing like a nice dress and heels. Like I was out on the date with my husband, and they dragged my dress on the ground, and they said, like, ‘we own the street. You can’t just walk around prancing in your little dress.’ And they were saying things that just didn’t make any sense to me because they don’t know me personally.”
Seconds after the mob set upon the husband, a teenage girl began dragging the wife by her hair and pepper sprayed her in the face while another began beating her and kicking her in the stomach. The attack was so brutal, it left the woman with bald spots from where chunks of her hair were torn from her scalp."
Do you really want people to write lyrics like: "Yea yea yea man, take a gun and shoot all the kids at school, because hey man, that's what I likes to do! Yea yea yea..." You are going to try to tell me that that is art and that won't have a negative impact on some kids somewhere... and not just one or two kids! This is fed into the minds of millions of kids. It's time for us to start acting more responsibly. Our words DO make a difference.
If you don't believe that, then maybe none of your words above make a difference either and what's the point of your responding to my comments?!
I'm sure a song like "K*ll Mathew cuz that would be great" would kinda piss you off... and rightly so. What we say matters.
Actually we had 30 years of decreasing crime.
Not sure what slice of time you are looking at, or specifically what kinds of crimes you are talking about, but overall violent crime rates have been thru the roof for quite a while now. FBI data shows that.
Filling our kids heads with hate-filled words, and showing them graphic violence does indeed promote violence in kids. This has been documented and proven repeatedly. This is the area that we need to address and NOT ignore.
There was about a 30 year stretch of them going down. Early 90s to almost 2020
At least you hope like hell she isn't.
btw, guess who committed the beheadings for ISIS? Teenagers who were shown videos on how to hate. Teenagers who became totally desensitized to violence and hate.
Look at the Palestinian protestors... mainly young college aged kids who were lead by hate instigators with their propaganda and videos.... Students who only the summer before would have denied ever wanting to hurt ANYONE or threaten a fellow student, but there they were just a few short months later trying to literally get at Jewish students JUST for being jewish... Fellow classmates! Fellow students at their universities. Unbelievable. Student Palestinian protesters who fully supported Hamas!
Soooo much influences our kids. Over and over again, many of these protesters didn't even have a CLUE what "From the River to the Sea" even meant, but they were willing to resort to violence to defend the slogan. Columbia most recently comes to mind...
YES, what we say DOES matter!!!! It's what journalism is after all, isn't it? If you insist that this spewing of hate and violence doesn't make a difference then you might as well cancel journalism too.