How many times must we go through this? These studies never pan out. Like yesterday’s news story about yet another study that allegedly suggests that more sexual content on television increases teen pregnancy, we’re dealing with correlation and not causation. Maybe violent kids just prefer violent video games. The conjecture can go both ways. My favorite quote of the piece:
“It’s not the violence per se that’s the problem, it’s the context and goals of the violence,” said Olson, citing past research on TV violence and behavior.
There are definitely games kids shouldn’t be playing, she said, for example those where hunting down and killing people is the goal.
That constitutes just about every video game I ever played as a child. And yet someone I managed to not rape or murder anyone. I never even caused a school shooting, Jack Thompson’s favorite target when applying what I call his Video Game Unifying Theory of Violence, similar to Irreduceable Complexity, except instead of resulting in “God did it,” the gap is filled by “Video games did it.” I wrote about Thompson in a column last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if this study causes him to reemerge under the rock he came from. And here are some classic moments in Jack Thompson’s fear-mongering crusade to stop video game violence:
